


six impossible things before breakfast

by blueparacosm



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Adventure, Angst, Body Swap, Camp, Death, Fantasy, Fluff, Hanahaki Disease, Huddling For Warmth, Humor, Love Potion/Spell, M/M, Science Fiction, Sharing a Bed, Time Loop, Tropes, Truth Serum, hehe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:33:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28230957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueparacosm/pseuds/blueparacosm
Summary: A wormhole strands Murphy and Bellamy alone in the universe, and every planet they travel to seems intent on manufacturing romantic clichés, all designed to force the two voyagers together. Murphy suspects they've died and gone to Hell, and Bellamy just wants to put one foot in front of the other.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/John Murphy
Comments: 19
Kudos: 60





	six impossible things before breakfast

**Author's Note:**

> i believe a point comes in everyone's fic career where they just start writing weird indulgent shit. this is mine. bon appetit

In hindsight, he thought he should have been able to see it coming. It wasn’t like they were busy, or that much of anything was blocking their view. How the universe got away with shredding a giant green hole in the middle of space and not being noticed until they were right upon it, Bellamy was not sure and greatly resented.

On the other hand, being swallowed whole was, if nothing else, the most interesting thing in the last half of a decade to happen on the Ring.

In the morning, the artificial lights turned on. They ate their algae and drank their recycled water, and desperately engaged in mundane conversation to keep their minds off of these items’ origins. They worked and tinkered here and there, maintaining the old Go-Sci Ring turned shitty motel for seven. For the rest of the time the lights were on, they tried to keep busy, stay together, think happy thoughts, and not turn out like Murphy.

Just before they hit the wormhole, Bellamy was thinking that the marbles looked like little planets. There were six left in the chalk ring on the common room floor, and he was rolling his blue shooter in his fingers, thinking that this one in particular might have been Neptune, or Uranus.

“Earth to Bellamy,” said Harper, and flicked a marble at him. “Your turn to shoot.”

“Sorry.” He lined his shooter up with a little red marble that looked like Mars, fiery hot, rotating ever so close to the sun. It would have been a perfect shot, too, if alarms hadn’t started up wailing and startled him, sending the blue shooter careening over the chalk and tinkling across the room.

Monty and Raven exchanged a look and abandoned their marbles to race to Comms, and Emori chased after Raven and Harper chased after Monty, until only Bellamy and Echo were sat around the circle.

“You’re winning,” said Bellamy, having taken stock of the many marbles in Echo’s treasure pile and decided to be a fabulous conversationalist.

“Archer.” Echo mimed drawing a small bow. “Precision. I… have it,” she elaborated in a quiet, tilted voice, then dropped her hands and looked off wistfully toward Comms.

They’d break up any day now, if either of them could find the energy to bother with it.

Graciously, Monty’s voice crackled over the PA system, distorted and skipping. _“Guys, we’re get— crazy interference— Earth monitors down— coming up on— this— emergency. I don’t… Holy shit.“_

He noticed the marbles first, each of them shivering within the circle of chalk, before they began to roll in jagged directions, the floor shaking beneath them. Bellamy sat up on his knees and matched Echo’s startled eyes, holding onto the leg of a table bolted into the floor as books and bowls vibrated from their places and toppled over the sides of tables and shelves.

Green light overtook the trembling Ring, beaming in from the windows, all-encompassing. The light’s energy seemed to buzz around them, building into a low roar that deafened them to anything else. Silhouetted against its viridescence, Raven limped into the common room and charged for the starboard-facing corridor.

“Raven, what’s happening? Where are you going?!” Bellamy shouted, though Raven’s steps didn’t slow for a moment, and she didn’t look back.

“To find Murphy,” she answered.  


_“Why?!”_ Echo yelled after her, hanging tight to a table’s edge and reaching out as Raven stumbled, searching for purchase against the Ring’s quaking walls. “Raven, you shouldn’t be walking!”

Raven gripped with white knuckles the edge of a viewing window and looked over her shoulder, stony determination sharpening her features into blades. “Because we’re being pulled into a wormhole, and I don’t know what happens next.” Her jaw shifted hard, and she blinked back the beginnings of fear. “Because I’m not letting him die alone.” 

With that, she gathered her bearings and took another brave step forward, and another, and was halfway down the corridor when the Ring rocked violently, slamming her against the wall where she crumpled. The lights went berserk, flickering madly all down the hall.

Bellamy released the table and caught one last glimpse of Echo’s petrified stare before he stumbled to the corridor and pushed Raven back down, who was already struggling to get her legs beneath her again. She shoved stubbornly against him, grinding her shoulders up against his hands as she fought her way to her feet. Bellamy gripped her tighter and caught her frantic eyes. “Stop, Raven. Stop. I’ll find him.”

Raven searched his eyes, terror overtaking the courage at last. “There’s not much time,” she told him. “Please, hurry.”

He didn’t know why it meant so much to Raven that Murphy die with company. He didn’t know what deathbed pact she and Murphy kept, if any, and he didn’t need to know. There was nothing to debate, nothing to wonder. Despite every bloodied fist in their past, despite his insistence on being miserable and cruel and alone, Murphy had become family over the years. If this was the abrupt, absurd end, he would not be alone for it.

Bellamy fought his way through the halls as the alarm system wailed and the wormhole roared around them. He stumbled, disoriented by the flashing lights and the station’s tremors.

The tags on the vents were lying limp— the life support system was down. No water, no oxygen. He supposed it didn’t much matter now.

When he found Murphy at last, in a corridor that had always been dark and was littered with Murphy’s meager things, he was standing in front of the big, starboard bay viewing window, watching the wormhole bloom around them.

“Tough luck, I guess,” said Murphy, his voice tremulous.

Breathing hard in the quiet, Bellamy came and stood by Murphy’s side, and glancing his way, he could see Murphy’s eyes were wet with emerald tears.

“Hey, we don’t know what’ll happen.” Bellamy elbowed his side. “Maybe it’ll be fun. You love an adventure.”

“No, I don’t,” said Murphy, then croaked something that was desperately trying to be a laugh but wasn’t quite, and roughly wiped his eyes. “You come all the way down here to subject me to one last motivational speech?”

“You’re the best listener aboard,” said Bellamy, a grin taking to his lips as Murphy got all tangled up in himself, irritated and amused and miserable and terrified.

They stood in silence a moment, watching the green glow crawl across the black and drape itself over the stars, eating the world up whole.

“I only ask since we’re about to die and no one will ever know, and because I figure you owe me a favor, but do you think you could…” Murphy started, and swallowed tightly, and started again. “That I could…”

Murphy flexed his fingers, which had been stripped and broken too many times to count and seem to jut strangely from his palm. His hands were shaking something awful at his sides, and Bellamy turned his palm out and took the one between them and held it carefully, tight enough to promise but not enough to hurt. Murphy squeezed back, all palm and thumb, glaring out at the universe with shining eyes.

He may have thought himself a coward, and been called one by damn near everyone he’d met— but when death came, Murphy stood by Bellamy’s side and looked it in the face. No matter what happened next, Bellamy would remember that moment; when he finally saw Murphy, really saw him, for the very first time.

The light grew until it was blinding, the sound until deafening. They closed their eyes against the shine and the growl, Murphy’s hand clenching ever tighter around Bellamy’s until he thought his bones might break and then figured he didn’t much mind if they did.

Then it was silent, and snow was falling.

─── DESTINATION 1 ───

A biting wind blew, and snowflakes caught in its eddy flurried frantically about. All around him was snow and ice as far as the eye could see, though caves and mountains and strange blue stalagmites stabbed up from the frozen ground here and there, gargantuan, glittering.

He sat up in the snow, packed even and crunching beneath him though it might have gone down for miles for all he knew about snow. He tried not to move too quickly, and then he twisted around, found Murphy and his cold fingers still knitted up in Bellamy’s.

Murphy’s eyes were as stark, icy blue as Bellamy had ever seen them, and snowflakes clung to his lashes like silver stars. They were both afraid to look behind them, and find the source of the supermassive shadow carving a black arc into the snow.

The choice passed between them in silence, and together they turned to see it.

The Ring’s entire starboard quarter was smashed against the icy plain, crumpled up like paper and half-buried in never-ending snow. The rest of it was gone, and so were their friends.

───

“Fuck,” cried Murphy, throwing Bellamy’s hand aside, whose joints were already stiff with cold. “Fuck!”

Bellamy lay staring up at the white sky for some time, catching his breath, as Murphy dug panicked trails the snow.

“We’re dead. We died. We’re in Hell. I knew it.” Murphy turned and pointed a finger at Bellamy. _“You,”_ he accused.

Bellamy slowly cast his eyes toward a paling Murphy. “Me what?”

“We’re in Hell because of you. I never hurt anybody until you came along; I might’ve made it. Damn you, Bellamy.”

“It’s a little late for damning,” Bellamy sighed, rolling onto his knees and stilling carefully as the packed snow cracked beneath him, sinking somewhat. “Stop freaking out. We’re not dead.”

“Yeah? How do you figure, smart ass?”

Bellamy stood at last, stamping neat twin prints into the snow, and tilted his head toward their slice of the Ring as he brushed snowflakes from his coat and shook them pointlessly from his curls. “Why would we take the starboard quarter to Hell with us?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were so intimately acquainted with the mechanics of the afterlife,” said Murphy, snotty as ever, throwing his hands out. “I doubt any of this is _real.”_

With a sigh, Bellamy turned to wrap a fist in Murphy’s shirt collar, then took the flat of his palm and slapped Murphy across the face. Just hard enough to leave the shape of him behind. Murphy stared in disbelief as Bellamy asked, “Did that feel real?”

If looks could kill, Murphy would have put Bellamy in a grave long ago.

“I don’t know. Does this?” Murphy lunged for Bellamy, knocking him down like a bowling pin. The deep snow didn’t actually do much in the way of cushioning their fall, frozen and packed tight as it was, and a great plume of white breath gasped out of Bellamy as his shoulders collided with the ground and Murphy landed atop him, pushing the heels of his palms into Bellamy’s collarbones to hold him down.

“Is that all you got?” Bellamy coughed. Blue eyes flitted all around Bellamy’s face. Hesitantly, Murphy raised his hand as if to slap Bellamy back. Then he sat back on his heels, perched over Bellamy’s waist, and shook his head in exasperation.

“I know what you’re doing. Stop trying to distract me,” grumbled Murphy. “I’m a grown man. I’m allowed to be worried that we’re living out _Dante’s Inferno._ ”

Bellamy grinned and shoved Murphy off to the side, and Murphy blurted something vulgar before he toppled over face-first in the snow.

_Thunk._

Bellamy squinted toward the sound, trading a curious look with Murphy as he lifted his shiny face from the snow. Together they reached out to brush the remaining snow from whatever solid, hidden thing Murphy’s elbow had betrayed.

When it was unburied at last, Bellamy found that it looked like a bug’s eye, round and puzzled out of sleek triangular panels, their copper color muted by webbed patterns of crawling ice. Murphy planted red, shivering hands on either side of it.

“Wait, Murphy. We don’t know what—“

Murphy pulled the object from the snow. A loud crack sounded, and a pair of shoulders rose up from beneath the white, snow tumbling free down its front. “Shit!” Murphy screamed, and flung the helmeted head toward Bellamy. Bellamy grimaced as the frozen corpse toppled against him.

“Well,” he said, knocking the body back into the snow, “There’s your proof we’re not dead.”

“Because there would never be disgusting human corpses underfoot in Hell, that would be gross. Right, thank you. I feel much better.”

Bellamy rolled his eyes and got to work unearthing the rest of the corpse. It was wearing a skintight suit beneath a strange, rubbery chest plate, which he wasn’t sure was useful enough to attempt wrestling the body out of it. The helmet might come in handy, though; Murphy’s ears were turning purple.

Bellamy planted his knee on the corpse’s chest, which cracked again from either busted ice or old bones, and pushed up on the helmet. “Pull,” he ordered Murphy, who frowned in distaste but ultimately cooperated, hooking his fingers on the rim and yanking the helmet free.

Murphy turned the helmet over in hands that were quickly turning from pink to purple, and raised his brows as he pressed a button on the helmet’s side and lifted the face shield. “Huh,” he mused, and then crammed his head inside it. The shield came down again, jagged, impeded by crystals of ice in every slot and hinge.

With his face veiled by holographic shapes, Murphy tilted and turned all around, holding his hands out in front of him as if drunk and looking for a good, sturdy wall. “Woah.”

“What’s wrong?” Bellamy came closer, extending hands toward Murphy, but not touching.

“It’s like one of those old VR headsets, there’s a screen inside. It’s calling this place ‘Nakara.’ It says the planet’s primary function is an ossuary.” Murphy’s lips turned down in a judgmental frown. “This font seems like overkill.”

“Focus, Murphy. It being an ossuary explains the body. What else?”

“It’s selecting something in these brackets. It’s…” Murphy turned on his heel and pointed out into the icy plains toward a big blue lump in the distance, glittering beneath layers upon layers of powdery snow. “It’s out there. It wants us to go to that cave.”

“Alright, then,” said Bellamy, brushing off snowy hands and making towards the little blue spot in the distance that marked the ice cave.

“What?” Murphy blurted, wrestling the helmet off. “You’re just gonna blindly listen to the mysterious alien helmet?”

Bellamy gestured towards the battered chunk of the Ring behind them, still tracing a hulking black rainbow across the winter sky. “Not like we have anything to stick around for. Got a better idea?”

He walked on, and for a moment Murphy stared after him, lips parted in astonishment. “May I point out that the last guy in the magic helmet turned into a popsicle?” he shouted at Bellamy’s back, just barely able to be heard over the roaring wind.

“I hear your concern and assure you it has been taken into consideration,” Bellamy called back, marching on. With that, Murphy cursed and scrambled after him, crunching clumsily through the deep snow.

They trudged quietly toward the ice cave, growing from a blue blot of paint on a blank canvas to an identifiably crystallized structure, gaping open and running deep— shelter, amongst the miles and miles of nothing but blinding white snow.

Murphy was shivering in his ratty t-shirt, tongue in his cheek to keep his teeth from chattering. His blue fingers were curling up against the helmet, exchanging fingertips for knuckles against the helmet’s cold metal before those started going numb, too. Bellamy didn’t let himself think about it for too long before he shrugged his jacket off.

Murphy stumbled as he walked, still staring out at the snow with knitted brows as Bellamy fixed the jacket around his shoulders, and flicked the fraying collar up around Murphy’s neck.

For once in his life, Murphy seemed like he was at a loss for words. He must have run through a hundred quips before settling on, “Such a gentleman.” It was a sarcastic purr, like most things that came from Murphy’s lips, but Bellamy knew his language well enough to hear the thanks, and knew that if Murphy didn’t want it he would have said the jacket stunk and chucked it back in Bellamy’s face.

Bellamy grinned as Murphy stared resolutely ahead while he stuffed his arms into the jacket’s sleeves and rolled his shoulders, all tough guy about it.

Another mile of walking brought them to the cave, which felt like it should have been closer when it was the only thing they could see. They hesitated a moment beneath the big blue arch, staring into the cave’s dark depths.

“Kind of weird how it just crops up out of nowhere.”

“Probably,” agreed Murphy, “but Jack Frost is nipping at my dick too hard to spend much more time out here deliberating.” He tucked the helmet beneath his arm and swaggered into the cave without looking back. Bellamy shook his head, following after him into the dark. 

It was not significantly warmer nor less wet inside the cave, and the general levels of dread, too, remained about the same. But they were safe, at least, from falling snow and the awful wind, left to howl past the entrance like a dog forgotten outside.

“Now what?” Bellamy asked, as Murphy nestled his head inside the helmet again and craned his neck around. “Any guidance from the magic helmet?”

“It says, _‘Ask again later.’_ ”

Bellamy huffed a powdered sugar laugh into the freezing air, and tamped it down just as Murphy swung his head toward Bellamy, seeming to tilt his chin up in a pleased manner.

“Seriously,” Bellamy insisted. “Not to be grim, but I’m not sure we’ll survive the night if we don’t get somewhere warm. Figuring out where we are isn’t even on the agenda yet. Give me something to work with.”

“ _‘Shut up, Murphy,’_ was always so much shorter, not that I don’t appreciate you trying to be sweet in our dying hours.” Bellamy opened his mouth to say just that, when Murphy swiveled his head toward the ground.

“Beneath us,” he announced. “The helmet’s showing a picture of this… spherical, like, device, covered in symbols. A few are glowing. Maybe it’s a key or a code— maybe our way out.”

Bellamy hesitated. “We really need to prioritize proper shelter and a fire before we go exploring.”

“Didn’t see any trees out there, and this cave is the only shelter for miles,” Murphy pointed out, taking off the helmet. His spiky hair had gone flat and stupid-looking, even as he pinned Bellamy with a solemn look. “Either this cave is our doorway to freedom, or we’re dead. So I think you ought to get ready to go spelunking, brave pioneer.”

It looked like one of those increasingly and frustratingly common occasions where Murphy was right, so Bellamy relented, extending a hand toward the tunnel.

Murphy didn’t seem particularly satisfied to be right about this, never one to enjoy surprises, so rarely the one to lead a charge into the dark. But always, always knowing what needed to be done, and the first to be willing to get it over with. And so they ventured deeper into the belly of the cave.

Come to find, the belly indeed.

They were first harassed by swooping bats, which attempted to snatch Murphy up by his shiny helmet and seemed shocked to find he was too heavy to carry. Bellamy had a good laugh at his expense as Murphy swatted madly at the things, ranting and raving about rabies.

Once he’d had his fill, Bellamy took the shiny helmet and knocked them dead out of the air. Murphy sighed, grateful at first, before he snatched the helmet away and walked on ahead, switching his hips to make a point. Bellamy wasn’t sure what. Something about not being a damsel, probably.

Then there was the comically large spider, which tackled Bellamy about a third of the way down and got him beneath its fangs, and then collapsed atop him after a spectacular explosion of guts at the end of Murphy’s icicle, ripped from the ceiling and painted red with blood.

Murphy had stood heaving over Bellamy, splattered head to toe with bug brains and looking the furthest thing from a damsel, and said, “Always hated spiders.” Flashed a brilliant, wicked smile that Bellamy would likely never forget.  Him and his theatrics.

Then there was the grotesque, shifting walls, pulsing and roiling. A strange smell brewed as they walked ceaselessly forward, the pitch black just barely illuminated by the tiny flashlight perched on the side of the magic helmet.

Bellamy had his horrible suspicions, and by the twist of Murphy’s face and the precedence of that wild imagination of his, he suspected Murphy was thinking the same.

Shortly after shit started to get really weird, the tunnel made a great shift, taking their feet out from under them. Murphy stumbled, reaching out to steady himself. A warning was on the tip of Bellamy’s tongue, and shortly died just as Murphy grabbed hold of the blue wall and then cried out in pain, lurching back on unsteady ground.

Bellamy dove forward and caught him just before Murphy’s shoulder would have slammed against the opposite wall, and held him tight without much meaning to, not letting go until the beast settled and was still.

“Shit,” Murphy swore, muffled against Bellamy’s shoulder. He cradled his own hand against Bellamy’s stomach, tilting his head down to see the damage. Bellamy stared a moment at Murphy’s hair and the cold-pink rim of his ear before he released him, and unthinkingly—as always— took Murphy’s wrist in his hand.

His right hand was badly burned, bright red with a waxy sheen.

“Snow,” said Bellamy. “We can go back up, put it in some snow.”

Murphy tugged his hand from Bellamy’s grasp, looking at Bellamy like he was a moron. “We’re too far down to turn around. Don’t worry about it.”  


Bellamy frowned. “It has to hurt.”

“Well, it doesn’t,” said Murphy, holding his hand to his chest, his fingers flexed to keep them from touching his palm. “We gotta keep moving.”

“Murphy—“  


“It must have been acid,” Murphy interrupted, walking ahead. Bellamy begrudgingly followed, wishing he’d gotten a better look at the injury, mentally calculating how quickly he could retrieve snow, considering whether the ice inside the beast was acidic and dangerous to apply to Murphy’s skin. “It’s moving, pushing us down,” he added, gesturing at the pulsating walls in disgust. “We’re in something’s guts, and I figure we’ve got until supper time to get down to that sphere.” 

Bellamy was suddenly not as interested in turning around, and picked up the pace until they were side by side again.

After a quiet moment of walking on in their little stretch of light, Murphy started fumbling with the helmet. Bellamy glanced over, and saw out of the corner of his eye Murphy grimacing, flinching as the helmet’s rim hissed over his blistered palm and fingers.

“You’re hogging the helmet,” said Bellamy, snatching it carefully away. “I want a turn.” Murphy relinquished it with a knowing look but said nothing, and moved a little closer to Bellamy’s side again to steal some warmth.

Bellamy lowered the shield and held in a gasp as the screen lit up with labels and lights and meters and measurements. He’d never seen technology like this, not even on the Ark. He tilted his sights toward the green circle beneath their feet, framing the sphere of symbols. 

“Fifteen hundred feet until we arrive at our destination,” he read aloud, following the white line tracing a path from them to that mysterious place below, perhaps the deepest point inside the organism.

“This looked like a lot more fun in _The Magic School Bus,”_ grumbled Murphy. Bellamy was about to respond that he’d never seen it, because it seemed Murphy had seen every television show and every movie the Ark library had to offer, but the words hadn’t escaped him before the sound of bubbling liquid made itself known and a tumbling came up behind them, increasing exponentially in volume as it sped up.

They looked over their shoulders as one, and watched as a wall of spider legs rose up at the top of the tunnel they were in, glistening, sizzling against the acidic walls. The wall of blue lining clenched and closed up, sealing off the tunnel. Murphy and Bellamy backed up as the spiders slid down the tunnel, faster and faster, some dead and trampled and disfigured, some very much alive and scrambling to escape the chaos.

“What is my life?” Murphy asked hopelessly of the spider ball, and then stumbled after him as Bellamy snatched his arm and made a break for it down the tunnel, the both of them running as fast as their frozen joints would take them.

“Four hundred!” Bellamy shouted, boots pounding as the black avalanche rolled closer and closer.

“Spiders?!” cried Murphy, looking back, wild-eyed.

“Feet until the sphere! Three hundred now!”

“Fuck this place!” replied Murphy.

“Two hundred feet!”

“Fuck this fucking place!”

“A hundred feet!”

Murphy didn’t curse anything that time, stumbling as they made a turn and found the tunnel blocked off. Bellamy saw red brackets around the obstruction and reacted probably the wrong way but the only way he knew how, barreling ahead shoulder-first. Murphy reached out in alarm as Bellamy threw himself into the wall, and took hold of Murphy’s wrist to yank him forward, the both of them tumbling past the acid-slick flap.

The spiders tumbled on down another branch until the skittering, thumping sound of them was gone.  When it was over, Bellamy opened his eyes. The weight on his chest, heaving for breath, was Murphy, whose body shook as Bellamy dissolved into delirious laughter.

“Damn it, Bellamy,” Murphy swore, reaching up to press the button on the side of the helmet. Bellamy’s face shield shuttered up so Murphy could properly glare at him, propped up on his elbows on either side of Bellamy’s grinning face. “Why is it that I never get into these situations with anyone else?”

Bellamy smiled up at him and his pink, breathless face. “Well, I know you love an adventure.”

“No, I don’t,” insisted Murphy, rolling off of Bellamy and collapsing on his back, entirely out of breath. “I really, really don’t.”

Murphy made to sit up, then, and hissed as he forgot his burned palm and brushed it against the cavern floor. Bellamy propped himself up to tend to Murphy, and gasped as the cold air hit his back, becoming aware all at once of the searing chemical burn the creature’s wall had licked up his spine and shoulder.

“You’re hurt,” said Murphy, looking over sharply as if he’d known it before and forgotten.

“Nah, it’s no worse than yours,” Bellamy reassured him, lifting off the helmet and shifting onto his knees to survey the quiet, cold room they’d found themselves in, wincing as his spine twisted against his muscle and his muscle against his skin, or what was left of it.

The room was still blue, still noticeably alive, but not roiling, not crawling with creeping things. And then there was the sphere. It was bronze and sculpted into a wave-like spiral, marked with embossed, incomprehensible symbols, and hovering, inexplicably for as huge as it was— as high and wide as Bellamy was tall, and then some.

“You’re lying,” Murphy insisted, coming over on his knees to see the damage, where nearly half of Bellamy’s shirt had dissolved to nothing and left his burned skin exposed to the cold. Murphy’s hands hovered over Bellamy’s shoulder. “Bellamy, it looks pretty nasty.”

“It’s okay, really. Let me see your hand,” said Bellamy, reaching up and back for Murphy’s wrist, which was quickly snatched from the tips of Bellamy’s fingers.

“Why do you do that?” Murphy snapped, shoving at Bellamy’s unharmed shoulder before clambering awkwardly to a stand, rolling from knee to foot to keep his hands off the ground.

“Do what?”

He gestured irritably at Bellamy’s entirety. “This. Your little doting, self-sacrificial guardian act.”

“It’s not an act. I’m just… I’m just looking out for you.”

Murphy flicked suspicious eyes toward him as he bent over to take the helmet from Bellamy and fit it snug over his head, shielding his face again with its honeycomb visor. “I’m not a kid,” he grumbled.

“No, you’re my friend. I take care of my friends.”

For a long while Murphy said nothing, turned fully towards the sphere, strategically moving hands and fingers in front of the face shield. Then, at last, he muttered, “Yeah. I… I know,” and Bellamy supposed that was better than nothing.

“So, the helmet’s calibrating, or whatever. Retrieving information about the sphere. Says it’s gonna take about ten minutes, and not to take the helmet off.” Murphy stepped back and forth on unsteady feet as he spoke, sounding a little green.

“You gonna be okay? I wouldn’t puke in that thing.”

“Yeah, I’ll do my damndest,” Murphy snipped, lowering his tired body to the ground again and hugging Bellamy’s jacket tighter around himself. He was biting his tongue again, not-quite-controlled shivers shaking him all over.

Bellamy took a seat himself, his burned side facing out, and scooted close to Murphy. He was never too worried about pushing his boundaries with Murphy, who would never hesitate to react poorly to something he didn’t like, and reached an arm around Murphy’s shoulders.

“Not a kid,” Murphy reminded him, allowing Bellamy to jerk him closer so his head laid upon Bellamy’s shoulder, and Bellamy could rest his cheek against Murphy’s hair.

“It’s not always about you. I’m cold too, you know,” reasoned Bellamy. “Someone took my jacket.” 

Murphy laughed that silent, barely-there laugh of his, just enough that it vibrated through Bellamy. “Fair.”

Bellamy couldn’t help but grin the whole time they waited, huddled close enough together that their white breath made one cloud before fading away.

There was something strange and special about getting close to Murphy. Murphy was a vicious, beaten sort of creature, and Bellamy imagined touching Murphy felt much like what the first man to tame a wolf must have felt. Complete and inexplicable trust. Finding a friend where there had once only been the promise of blood.

“Don’t you get lonely?” asked Bellamy, staring up at the sphere with him.

“What about?”

“Your little lone cowboy act,” Bellamy mimicked, though his voice was quiet and genuine. “Pushing everyone away. Protecting your dignity with cruelty. All that.”

Murphy cycled through his wheel of emotions, letting the eight varieties of defensive anger spin by and waiting until a more appropriate reaction found the surface. As usual, he went with sarcastic nonchalance. “Wow, Bellamy. Tell me how you really feel.”

Bellamy smiled, soft and tentative. “You were hogging the constructive criticism.”

Murphy started to pull away, and Bellamy held tight to him until Murphy gave up, sinking back into their pocket of warmth.

“No,” he said, “I don’t get lonely. I’m better off on my own. Don’t you get tired, taking care of everyone but yourself?”

“No. It’s what I’m good for.”

Murphy shook his head, an unhappy, incredulous sort of smile on him. “Alright then. Case closed.”

He left Bellamy to the cold as he unfolded from their huddle and stood up, approaching the sphere.

“Just in time to get the hell out of here,” he said, waving a hand in front of his face shield. “Helmet calibrated, ‘anomaly stone’ identified, related files downloaded, ‘most relevant destination’ selected, key outlined. Whatever literally _any_ of that means.” He raised hesitant hands up to the anomaly stone. “Here’s to hoping there’s no particular order.”

Bellamy watched as Murphy circled the floating stone and gently tapped each raised symbol outlined on the helmet until he finally came to the end of them. The sphere kept floating, unperturbed.

“Well, that was anticlimactic,” said Murphy, just before the cave exploded in green.

───  DESTINATION 2 ───

Wherever they were sent, it wasn’t home. Murphy knew this because there was sand.

When he realized this, he said, “Sand? You’ve gotta be kidding me. _Fuck.”_

“Sand’s not so bad,” replied Bellamy, sitting up in the sunlight to peer around. The color had returned to his skin and left him again with that strange, copper glow he carried around. “We can deal with sand.” He stood up and brushed himself off, and sent a questioning look Murphy’s way. “Why are you mad at sand?”

“I’m not mad at sand. I’m mad at the situation. The scenario. First the goddamn Arctic, and now the _beach?”_ Murphy cried, flinging his hands out toward the ocean whose blue waves tumbled playfully onto the shore, thoroughly amused by the _scenario._

“I thought you liked the beach,” said Bellamy, trudging up to the tree line where tall palms leaned over, heavy with fruit.

“Where the hell did you get that from? And what are you doing?” Murphy snapped, scrambling up standing and beating the sand from his clothes.

“I remember you saying you liked warm weather, once. And swimming. I think you mentioned swimming, once.” Bellamy bent to gather a handful of twigs, and tucked them neatly into the crook of his arm. “I’m collecting resources.”

“ _Why?_ We aren’t staying here!” Murphy wiped the sand from the helmet’s face shield and hurriedly activated the map.

This planet was unidentified, and a blue outline circled the land and identified useful resources, marked the existence of Bellamy, the only other human-shaped heat signature on the map, and everything beyond that shape was blank with ocean, implying that they were on a deserted island about as big as the original hundred’s shitty little drop ship camp had been. The green circle indicating the stone lit up in the water, which wasn’t that bad, but was enough to still tick Murphy off. Everything just had to be that little bit extra difficult.

Murphy shuttered the face shield up. “Yeah, we’re absolutely not staying here. Stone’s a couple hundred feet out and the tide’s low. Let’s bounce.”

He was already turned toward the shore, but Bellamy, however, hummed in disagreement, still picking up sticks. Murphy frowned.

“Bellamy? Time to go, man.”

“No,” said Bellamy. “We need to rest, and eat, and drink. We don’t know where that thing’ll send us next and I have a feeling it’s not going to be as generous a place as this. We don’t even know how it works and I’m not playing a guessing game that’ll get us killed just because you’re freaking out. I’m building a fire, and we can mess with the stone again in the morning.”

“Excuse me?” bit Murphy, pacing up the beach to meet Bellamy beneath the trees. “I’m not ‘ _freaking_ _out.’_ We’re losing precious time, here. How do you think we just teleported to a new planet in the blink of an eye? Time passes when we use that stone to travel. Look! Look at my hand,” Murphy insisted, turning over his palm and shoving it in Bellamy’s face.

The blisters were gone, and faint, shiny scar tissue shone where the burn had been its worst. The wound looked several weeks old. Bellamy reached up to touch his own shoulder, knitting his brows as he felt smooth, unmarred skin.

“Our friends might need help, and who knows how much time has already passed. You can’t just… give up. Since when do you give up?”

Bellamy looked conflicted a moment, and a flicker of sadness crossed his face before he was putting on his show of surety and leadership again. “If weeks have gone by, one day won’t make a difference. We’re no good to anyone if we keel over, and besides, if it really has been weeks we’d probably have died of starvation in there, or I’d have a wizard beard,” he said matter-of-factly, and resumed his search for sticks. “Can you shake down some coconuts?”

Murphy shook his head, lips parted in disbelief. “We’re lost on some backwater planet in the middle of the universe after a wormhole destroyed our home and probably stranded our friends out there, and you want me to pick fucking _coconuts_?”

Bellamy shook a bug off of the stick in his hand and added it to his pile, and then, slowly but surely, met Murphy’s eye. “What exactly do you want me to do, Murphy?”

Murphy stared back, his expression twisted in fear and fury. “I— I want you to fix it! I want you to come up with one of your big, stupid plans and get us home!”

Bellamy shook his head, turning his back to Murphy as he scavenged. “Why are you in such a hurry to get back anyway? You hated the Ring, and clearly didn’t want anything to do with any of us. Thought you’d like it, having a whole island to yourself.”

“Not if I’m stuck here with _you!”_

Bellamy bundled his sticks between his chest and arm and marched toward Murphy, breaching unspoken territory until he was right in Murphy’s face. Surprise flitted quickly across Murphy’s typically controlled features, but he held his ground.

“Since for some reason you’re incapable of thinking rationally right now, I’ll lay it out for you, Murphy. We don’t know how to use the stones. Even if we could find our way home, the Ring is gone. There’s nothing to go back to. We don’t know where our friends are. We don’t know where we are, and we’re all alone.

“What I do know is that right now, you and I are alive and safe, and we can find food and water and shelter, and we can build a damn fire. We can put one foot in front of the other, and I don’t have anything better for you than that. You understand?”

Murphy shut his mouth and lowered his eyes, and slowly, gave a nod of his head. Like he’d done before and would do again, when Bellamy saw fit to tighten the hold he had on him.

And it was because Bellamy hadn’t spoken to Murphy like that in a long time— like he was a wayward delinquent in need of explicit directions and rules, a firm voice and firm hand— that Murphy went quietly, and picked his fucking coconuts.

When all the chores were said and done, there was a fire on the beach, a stack of kindle, and an unassuming pile of coconuts beside it. The sun was setting, painting Bellamy’s silhouette on the pink sky as he broke twigs and tossed the pieces into the flames. They hadn’t spoken in some time, and neither of them seemed inclined to do so any time soon.

Murphy broke open a coconut on a rock, and thought to pass Bellamy the other half. He couldn’t predict what Bellamy would do so he kept them both, and tried to drink quietly, catching stray rivulets with the back of his hand so as not to make a mess.

He just needed to be silent and small for a while was all, like he always did after he let his mouth get ahead of him. Stay out of the way, be good for a little bit. Though he doubted Bellamy was mad, since he’d turned a leaf with Murphy and started treating him like some kind of fragile fucking mental patient.

Sometimes Murphy wished he would just get pissed off, get sick of Murphy. He’d found it was easier to take a punch than to apologize. Easier to bite his tongue than to tell the truth.

About five minutes after this thought, Murphy discovered that if there was some kind of omniscient, higher being overlooking the universe, it was out to get him.

“You mind?” Bellamy asked at last, pointing his eyes towards the coconuts. His voice sounded dry as sandpaper, and Murphy understood that was likely the only reason he’d worked up the nerve to ask.

Murphy had meant to be good, but being asked for a favor turned that plan on its head. After the way Bellamy’d snapped at Murphy, he could go find his own damn food. Fuck him.

“No, I don’t mind at all,” Murphy blurted instead, looking up with wide eyes as his mouth carried on without him. “You can have anything you want from me.”  


Bellamy’s face scrunched in confusion and surprise, trying to decipher the punchline from words that didn’t make up a joke— because Murphy had told the truth. God knew why, and try as he might to take it back or call it a joke, nothing came out.  


“You know I’m not mad, right? You don’t have to, uh, apologize, or…” Bellamy gestured vaguely at all of Murphy, “…suck up.”

It happened again. “I’m not sucking up, I’m just being honest. If I was sucking up, it’d be like when we first met and I did anything you wanted. That was sucking up, and it’s embarrassing to think about now, so I wish I hadn’t just reminded you.” Murphy’s voice got steadily more strained as he blabbered on and tried to stop, tried to take back words or change their course or, at the very least, just shut his mouth. He couldn’t. “That’s why I was acting out of my mind, I guess. I wanted to impress you, and to be your f-fr-fr _uck!”_

“Fruck? Were you… were you gonna say 'friend?'”

“Yes! Shut up! Sorry, I don’t mean that!”

Bellamy was openly staring, eyes twinkling with amusement. “What’s gotten into you?”

“It’s these fucking coconuts! They’re making me stupid!”

Bellamy grinned, watching the coconut half that Murphy threw away from him soar across the beach.

“You sure you’re not delirious or something? It’s been a long day. You might’ve hit your head.”

“No, there was something in the water. I know it. I’m trying to… I can’t—“  


“Lie?”

Murphy frowned, staring into the other half of the coconut in his lap. “Yeah. Sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?”

“That I lie so much.”

Bellamy was quiet, gazing thoughtfully at Murphy.

“Hand me one,” he said at last, reaching out.

“What?”

“Hand me the other half. If you really drank coconut truth serum, then it ought to be fair, at least.”

“Bellamy, you don’t have to do that—“ Murphy started, but it was too late. It was gone from Murphy’s hands and the water was already dripping down Bellamy’s chin, and he smiled at Murphy as he tossed the coconut half over his shoulder. 

“Ask me something. Something good.”

Murphy was hesitant to take advantage, but judging by the stupid grin on Bellamy’s face, this was shaping up to be the greatest icebreaker game of any of his team bonding wet dreams. Leave it to the new and reformed Bellamy to sacrifice both their dignities for a little kumbaya.

He knew what he wanted to ask, and since it was already out in the open, Murphy figured no more damage could really be done.

“Were we friends, in the beginning?”

Bellamy smiled, serene. “The first I’d ever had.”

Murphy’s eyes fluttered. He wasn’t expecting that; didn’t know what to think of that. Frankly, Murphy didn’t know if he believed that. Maybe they were both delirious, and _coconut truth serum_ was as ridiculous as it sounded.

“You were a dick to me,” he said softly.

“No surprise, then, why you were the first to put up with me,” Bellamy replied, and quirked his head to the side. “Well, that’s not completely true— it was because of my family. I wasn’t allowed to have friends, until the ground. And then I met you.”

“You just wanted to take the followers I already had for your own. You wanted me because I was stupid and violent, easy to manipulate.”

“I’ll spend the rest of my life making up for the way I’ve treated people— the way I treated _you_ — as a means to an end,” admitted Bellamy, using a stick to push ash around in the fire. He was still smiling a little, inexplicably. Firelight danced in his deep, brown eyes.  “But I first looked at you because you made me laugh. I don’t guess I ever told you that.”

Murphy warmed in the face, near instantly. He glanced up at Bellamy across the fire, trying to be discreet as he did so, tilting up just his eyes and looking through his lashes. Bellamy was already staring, and for the first time, that peaceful smile started slipping.

“I like it when you blush,” was torn out of him quietly, his voice rough and restrained, but not quite enough.

To his credit, Bellamy didn’t panic. He clenched his jaw and kept Murphy’s stare, challenging. Murphy didn’t think that was fair, given he wasn’t the one who said the weird thing. Murphy narrowed his eyes. He wasn’t scared, either.

“I like your laugh. I like your smile. A lot.”

Bellamy straightened up, determined to not be outdone. “Well, I think you have good eyes. Blue. Sometimes green, I noticed. Like the ocean. Or something.”

“I like your freckles, and I want to touch your hair. Not in a weird way. Or, well, maybe in a weird way. Ah, shit.”

“I like it when you sing. It’s good. Sometimes I stay out of sight or pretend I can’t hear you, so I can keep listening.” Bellamy had to cast his eyes away after that one, and stare resolutely out at the water.

Murphy was sure he had scarcely been this embarrassed in all his life, and Bellamy was darkening deeply about the face, a cherry glow draped across his face and pinching hard at his ears. 

He wasn’t exactly sure why they had committed to the worst game of chicken ever, but he didn’t want to lose. Only, Murphy couldn’t think of anything else to say that wasn’t wildly incriminating, though of what crime he didn’t know. He could feel himself itching to blurt out things that people just didn’t say to one another at all, let alone to friends, and especially not to Bellamy Blake.

“You—“ Murphy started and stopped, struggling. “I— Abs.”

“What?”

“Abs. Saw them. Can we stop?”

All at once, Bellamy collapsed into laughter, tipping backwards onto the sand. Murphy’s blush was nowhere close to receding, but he sat up on his knees to see Bellamy’s face stretched in a smile, aimed at the darkening sky, and felt laughter shaking his shoulders too.

“I think this stuff made us a little drunk,” Bellamy laughed, holding his chest.

Murphy folded onto his rear again and lowered himself to the sand, casting his eyes toward the water, where the waves glinted with the beginnings of moonlight. “God, I hope so.”

Staring up at the sky until it was black and polka-dotted with stars, Murphy and Bellamy lay in silence on either side of the little fire, waiting for the serum to wear off. He’d thought Bellamy would be more interested in taking advantage of it, using it as an excuse to unload guilt, to get to the bottom of the Unsolvable Murphy Problem. But he was quiet, keeping to himself, and covering that heart on his sleeve.

Turning his head slightly on the sand, Murphy stared at the lines splitting off from the corner of Bellamy’s eye, the dark circles hanging beneath them. The downward turn of his lips, the crease in his brow.

They’d spent so long on the Ring that Murphy had forgotten he wasn’t always this way. Bellamy was not a people-person, or a hippie, or the director of activities for a cruise liner.

He was trying to keep them sane. Trying to keep himself sane; prepare for the better world he naïvely believed they were going back to when the five years were up.

It was Murphy's opinion that, at the end of the day, no amount of desperate positivity and self-sacrifice would change the fact that Bellamy, too, was a dangerous and deeply unhappy man, with no dearth of blood on his hands.

“Do you have nightmares?” Murphy whispered.

“Yeah,” replied Bellamy. “Do you?”

“Every night.”

Bellamy shifted in the sand. “Sorry.”

“Whatever,” said Murphy, turning his head back toward the sky and meaning to be finished with it. Clearly the serum wasn’t done with them yet, because then he opened his mouth again and said, “It’s better, when I’m sleeping with someone else. I didn’t have any dreams at all when I was with Emori.”

Bellamy looked like he didn’t want to speak either, but blurted, “It doesn’t help, sleeping with Echo… I, uh, I think we’re going to break up soon, if we’re both alive after this.”

Murphy looked over again, at Bellamy’s expression creased with regret. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. It might be nice to just call it off with someone for once, instead of losing them… other ways.” He shrugged against the sand. “We can just be friends now. I still love her, and all that, you know?”

Again, words slipped out of Murphy like silk, sounding so deceptively tranquil when all he wanted was to sew his mouth shut. “When the anomaly came, why didn’t you stay with her?” he asked, his voice small. “Why did you come for me?”

“Raven tried to get to you, but she didn’t make it. And I didn’t want you to be afraid,” Bellamy rolled his head to the side and met Murphy’s eyes in the starlight. “I didn’t want you to be alone.”

Murphy’s eyes nearly welled with tears, but he had taken on a great new initiative to stop crying at the drop of every goddamn hat, and turned his face away from Bellamy’s knowing eyes. But apparently the serum worked on physical expressions of insanity, too, because a few tears rolled quietly from his eyes to his temples, before finally finding a hiding place in his hair.

He was sorry he spent all that time on the Ring alone. He wished it hadn’t taken the end of everything for him to realize he had friends. He wished he’d spent more time with Bellamy.

“Well, look where that got you,” Murphy rasped, lifting a hand to address the island. “You’re gonna die out here with me, and this ugly mug is the last thing you’ll see.”

“I like your mug.”

Murphy looked over, alarmed, his vision still too blurred by tears to be playing that game. “Not again.”

“No, no,” said Bellamy, his grin gentle, a little awkward. “I think it’s gone, now. I just… wanted to say that.”

“Well, then,” croaked Murphy, hoping the firelight shielded his blush from view, but figured it probably didn’t as Bellamy kept on smiling at him, eyes softening in amusement. “I guess I ought to get my beauty sleep.”  


Bellamy sat up. “Should we set up shelter? We could make a lean-to pretty quick. I guess we should’ve done that when it was light out. And we should take turns to make sure the fire keeps burning. I can take first watch,” he blabbered as Murphy rolled leisurely onto his side in the sand, wrestled off Bellamy’s jacket and pillowed his head upon it, which Bellamy barely glanced twice at.

“Take a breath, Bear Grylls. Sleeping under the stars never hurt nobody.”

“It has if there were _predators_ around,” Bellamy replied hastily, which came out rather geeky in Murphy’s opinion. Murphy rolled his eyes. “There’s already been weird, mind-altering fruit. We don’t know what to expect from this place. Not sure we should be exposed at night.”

“Bellamy, it’ll be a cosmic miracle if we get out of this situation alive. No point in giving yourself a heart attack over lions, tigers, and bears, oh my.”

Bellamy scoffed, hesitantly lowering his back onto the sand again. “Where was this attitude during your little tantrum earlier?” he muttered, and Murphy probably deserved that. 

“I realized you were right.”

Bellamy tilted his head toward him. “What about? One foot in front of the other?”

“Nah,” said Murphy, gazing at an especially twinkly star. “Just that I like the beach.”

───

He needed a drawbridge for the moat, with crocodiles swimming beneath it. The turrets and battlements could stand to be taller. The outer town was fine, save for the house with a tiny hole blown in it from a little coquina clam’s bubbling breath.

Murphy was demolishing the house and rehoming the clam, burying it in the wet sand closer to the water’s edge, when Bellamy’s sandy shuffles approached at last.

“Morning, sunshine. Good to see you weren’t gruesomely mauled in the night,” Murphy greeted, looking up at Bellamy’s wild hair, dusty with sand. He rubbed his eyes as he stared out at the sunrise over the sea, and then slowly kneeled by Murphy’s work.

“Small mercies,” replied Bellamy belatedly, seeming to finally come to as he watched Murphy drag his fingers through the sand all the way to the water, shuffling on his knees. The next wave to creep up the shore fell into the groove, sending water rushing down the aqueduct to pool in Murphy’s moat. 

“I like your kingdom,” he said quietly, voice rough with sleep but happy, his curious eyes flitting all around the lumpy village and the lopsided castle, the horrible towers and turrets made from mud drizzle. “Got a throne in there?”

“Yeah,” agreed Murphy, leaning over to peer into the sloppily drawn-on castle door. “It’s made of bones.”

“Barbaric.”

“Resourceful,” countered Murphy, pointing a finger. A turret collapsed, again, and Murphy got to work using his aqueduct to make more mud. “You’ll like it. It’s very comfy.”

“Does that mean I’m the king?” asked Bellamy, propping a cheek on his hand and gazing at Murphy as he went about making strange modern art in the tangerine light of an early morning sun, awake at perhaps the earliest hour Bellamy’d ever seen him.

Murphy hummed, distracted. “‘Course. And I guess that makes me the court jester.”

“I don’t know. I think I’m more of a knight,” mused Bellamy. “But you… you’d be a great king.”

Murphy glanced up momentarily, eyes wide with surprise. His bright stare flicked over Bellamy, wondering, before he laughed and hung his head again, returning to his turret. “Whatever you say, Sir Bellamy.”

He worked awhile longer as Bellamy went to retrieve the helmet where it’d been all but forgotten after their argument, and when he returned, Murphy was sitting on his knees, staring at the little kingdom in the sand.

“I hope we land on a planet with a castle.”

“Maybe we will,” suggested Bellamy, holding the helmet out to Murphy. “I think we’re due a little luck, don’t you?”

Murphy brushed off his hands and stood, tightened Bellamy’s jacket around his waist, wore the helmet and lowered the shield. The circle lit up a few hundred feet out to shore, and the tide was significantly lower than it was when he’d been ready to go for the stone yesterday, and so Murphy had no good reason to ask that they wait.

He wished Bellamy wasn’t so good at calming him down; wished he wasn’t so good at reminding Murphy who he was. Else he might’ve still wanted to leave, too. 

But Bellamy had his strength back, and of course, because he was Bellamy Blake, he was ready to find his friends and get home or die trying.

And it wasn’t like they could stay on that island together, forever.

Murphy raised the shield and stepped to the edge of the water, glowing gold at the edge of every wave, and turned to the other man.

“Well, Sir Bellamy, think that big head of yours’ll sink you to the bottom fast enough, or do you wanna grab a stone?”

“I think your nose’ll do us just fine.”

Murphy sent him a slanted, sideways glance. “You love my ugly mug.”

Bellamy smiled. “Shut up, Murphy.”

───

Sunlight lanced through the water, and they chased the glint of it sparkling off of the bronze stone at the bottom of the sea.

The helmet took Murphy down fast, but there was still a ways to go and he wasn’t sure they’d make it back up to the surface if they ran out of air before they reached it. Not to mention, Murphy often found himself short of breath sooner than others and so rushed to the sea floor, swimming as hard as he could.

He was about a hundred feet from the stone when he realized Bellamy wasn’t on either side of him, and turned to float on his back, trying to find him in the blue.

Bellamy couldn’t swim. He was sinking, slow, and beginning to sort of intuit how to push himself toward Murphy and the stone, but his form was wrong and he wasn’t making enough progress. He’d never make it on his own.

Murphy casted a look back at the stone and then pushed off toward Bellamy, reaching out to him where he was still struggling against the current, pushing him pulse by pulse back to the shore.

Murphy was thankful they were underwater, because stubborn, prideful Bellamy, haloed by golden slits of wavering sun, had no way of arguing against help. He could only tighten his brow and take Murphy’s hand, and together they swam toward the ocean floor, sinking faster as one.

When they were upon it, Murphy and Bellamy took hold of the stone, hanging onto the hollow places as their legs were pulled toward the surface.

The keys to the ‘most relevant destination’ were highlighted, and thank God he’d calibrated the helmet before this. He touched each key, moving as quickly as he could around the stone as Bellamy started making bubbles and Murphy’s lungs began to burn, the ocean gripping them tight in its hand.

And then it let go of them, and the water was a world of green.

───  DESTINATION 3 ───

Bellamy’s hands hurt. Lying on his back in dead grass, and despite the fact that the sky was the color of grapefruit flesh, the first thing he noticed was that his hands hurt.

His bones felt crooked and his joints swollen, and when he raised a hand, his skin was pale as paper, his nails white-striped from regrowth, like… Murphy’s.

“Nuh-uh,” he heard himself say. “No way.” Only he hadn’t spoken.

Bellamy turned his head in the black grass and saw his own face staring back, eyes wide.

Looking slowly down at himself, there was Murphy’s black shirt with the silver honeycomb pattern up the sides, faded by wear and time; thin legs in straight-legged pants; Murphy’s boots; and Bellamy’s own jacket, tied around his waist. And on Bellamy’s head, with the face shield lifted, was the magic helmet that Murphy had been wearing. If Bellamy crossed his eyes, he could see down the long, straight line of Murphy’s defiant nose.

“This is seriously a pumpkin nightmare,” said Murphy, in Bellamy’s deep voice. Murphy screwed Bellamy’s brows up, looking alarmed by his own word choice. “ _Fucking. Fucking_ nightmare.”

Bellamy sat up, and his breath caught in his— Murphy’s?— chest as he took in their new world. The sky was a deep maroon and the grass underfoot was dead and stiff, and the trees, their bark in all number of strange colors and patterns, grew upside down, roots splaying out into the sky and then torpedoing back down to grab hold of the earth. A fish swam leisurely past Bellamy’s head in nothing but air.

Everything about this planet was wrong; opposite. It seemed like that was the point.

Murphy was ranting and raving, making Bellamy’s body pace. “This is just getting ridiculous, now. Is the universe just some big, elaborate wank?” he complained. “Prank. _Prank!_ God!” He threw his hands up.

While Murphy worked himself up and would inevitably pull it together in a few minutes, Bellamy tugged at the skyward, frail roots of a plant. Dirt crumbled away as he unearthed it, and revealed a blue rose that looked perfectly fine, despite growing upside down. Bellamy couldn’t help but aim a crooked, curious smile at it. Catching his eye from afar, Murphy practically growled.

“If you’re so infatuated with this little house of horrors why don’t you use my hemorrhoid— _helmet_ — and see if our friends are here, or find out where the anomaly cone is. Whichever’ll get us out of here as spoon as humanly possible,” Murphy snapped, marching over to harass one of the topsy-turvy trees.

He tried to rip off a branch and found that the bark was made of rubber, turning Murphy’s, or, well, Bellamy’s face red as the branch wobbled a little and then settled again, looking sort of pleased with itself.

“It’s not _your_ helmet,” Bellamy argued blandly, but obliged and lowered the face shield anyway.

“It’s on _my_ head!”

“Arguable.”

“Not bunny. Not even a little bit.”

Bellamy very nearly chuckled, seeing as that particular switcheroo was unfairly adorable, but Murphy pinned him with a horrible look that promised violence. Bellamy wasn't very intimidated by his own face, but relented for the sake of protecting his body's blood pressure from Murphy’s anger issues.

Turning his attention to the map, three things caught his eye: there were no humans on this planet besides the two of them, so another rescue bust; the air was not quite breathable, being made up primarily of oxygen but welcoming all kinds of strange chemicals that were sure to become a problem soon; and the anomaly stone appeared to be about a hundred feet above them.

Bellamy lifted the face shield and looked up, and Murphy followed his gaze all the way to the forest canopy of entangled roots, over which the pyramid-shaped anomaly stone unhelpfully hovered.

“Epigastric,” muttered Murphy.

───

So, the problem with traveling to a planet where everything is backwards turned out to be not so much the invasive body-swapping, or that everything was fish and roots, but that you were no longer in control. Like, at all.

Presently, Murphy and Bellamy were trying to climb a tree. Between said tree having the structural integrity of a bounce house, the two of them being ill-equipped for a sensible monkey bar moment in each other’s strange bodies, left being right and right being left and up being down and down being up, getting all but drunk on the air that was not quite air, and all of Murphy’s unhelpful suggestions coming out as, “Here’s a good football. Football. Football. Foot _hold_ ,”… it was safe to say they weren’t breaking any records.

The wretched state of Murphy’s hands wasn’t helping. First, Bellamy had fallen behind in the sea and required rescue, and now he was holding them back again, unable to maneuver Murphy’s lean and aching body. Murphy on the other hand seemed to be having no problem adapting to Bellamy’s, making use of his muscle perhaps better than Bellamy himself had, which was discomfiting to watch, to say the least. He was moving disturbingly fast.

Bellamy reached up to the next branch, each one shorter than the last. His scarred fingers trembled with resistance as he tried to curl them around the branch, one painful crook of the joint at a time.

“You’re not styrofoam at my ass, are you?” Murphy called down.

“Why would I stare at my own ass?”

“But you’d stare if it was mine?” he asked, in a tone that suggested he was waggling his eyebrows.

“I could just look beehive me.”

“Don’t!” Murphy squeaked. Not a flattering sound from Bellamy’s mouth, for sure.

Bellamy just smiled, shaking his head as he found a foothold and pushed himself precariously onto the next branch, using mostly his wrists to steady himself. “Your ass is fine, Murphy.”

“I know it’s slime! Shut up! Why are you so slow?” Murphy cranked his head back and down to glare at Bellamy, but his angry stare faded as he watched Bellamy struggle to get his hand around a particularly short and thin branch.

“Oh, yeah. That little hiccup,” he murmured. “Listen, fuck the stingers. Use your palms and your crumbs.” At Bellamy’s dubious look, he unwound an arm from his branch and stiffly flexed Bellamy’s own thumb at him, and Bellamy felt somewhat that he was implying it was an inferior thumb. “Really, I’ve mastered the opposable thing. ’Tis a source of jealousy for many monkeys, gorillas, and general apes.”

Bellamy stared after him as he started climbing again, unfettered. “I monopoly can’t tell which of that was the brain scrambling and which was just you.”

Murphy’s cheeky little laugh seemed to echo, he was getting so far ahead.

Intent on getting caught up no matter how stupid he looked doing it or how badly it hurt, Bellamy did as he was told and pushed his palms forward on the branch, using the lower muscles of Murphy’s palms, thumbs, wrists, and arms to push down on the branch and hoist himself up, his fingers sticking straight out as if disgusted by the whole process. It worked.

Bellamy steadied himself on the next branch and stared at Murphy’s hands as he moved on, up and up. His palms were marred by the scars of deep callouses from overuse, his knuckles scarred from violence, his nails jagged and striped from being torn out and fighting their way back again. His fingers, as discovered, were fucked to hell. They looked like the Grounders had thrown a parade on them, and Murphy hadn’t bothered to bind them. Or didn’t know how, and nobody had offered to help.

He climbed on, studiously not looking at them again.

Several minutes went by and Murphy had been chattering and complaining for a majority of those minutes, which Bellamy imagined was putting strain on his own voice, considering it was usually saved for special occasions. He was going on about this “ _Freaky Friday_ bullshit” when his distraction finally got the best of him, and his foot missed a branch entirely.

Most people might have thought that a miserable life did not lend itself to a belief in miracles. Bellamy, though, had come to believe that a life like that made miracles all the clearer to see. 

As he caught Murphy by the arm on his way down, he hoped he hadn’t just cashed in their last.

Those fucking fingers were crooked outward, and Murphy was slipping from Bellamy's hands.

_“Bellamy?!”_ Murphy cried, voice wavering terribly as he dangled, reaching up with his other arm to try and find Bellamy’s hand.

“I got you. It’s ok,” Bellamy gasped out, grimacing as he tightened his grip. “I got you."

He leaned over the branch against his stomach and reached out both arms to gather Murphy up in the crook of his elbows as best he could, trembling against his body’s own weight. Murphy scrabbled for a branch and clung desperately to the large and long one just above their heads, peeling himself away from Bellamy’s arms and perching atop it, and held onto it like a koala, belly to bark.

After he’d collected himself somewhat, Bellamy climbed to join Murphy on the big branch, sitting by his side and hunching over as they caught their breath. Murphy was still gasping, running hands through Bellamy’s curls as he sat up. Bellamy’d seen him doing that an awful lot since they got here.

It wasn’t long sitting there that Bellamy caught himself looking at his hands again, and the faint scars tracing Murphy’s head and heart lines. When he saved Bellamy’s life all those years ago, holding him and Mel up over the edge of a cliffside with nothing but a seatbelt and his battered hands, he’d bled. Bellamy had never bled for Murphy.

In the sky, a purple sun was rising and a black moon was falling, although the world seemed to be getting darker, and glimmering little fish swam all around, and Bellamy wished he were looking at Murphy’s face, wondering what he was thinking.

Instead he was looking at his own, knowing that Murphy wasn’t thinking of that day at the cliff, but was instead bored and deeply tired of near-death experiences, and still thinking about _Freaky Friday._

While he was staring at himself, he watched Murphy reach up and scratch at Bellamy’s lip, and then stop to pet the groove there, curious and absent at once.

“I was playing, uh, the floor is llamas— lava— with Octavia, when we were kids. Busted my lip on the table. It used to itch all the time, and I guess it probably shouldn’t anymore, but I still get… you know, phantom bitches.” Bellamy cringed. “Itches.”

Murphy snickered at getting phantom bitches, still gently thumbing the scar, which made Bellamy want to blush a little, and he hoped he wasn’t. Murphy’s face was so much more susceptible to that sort of behavior.

“That’s mice.”

Bellamy grinned, and Murphy seemed to be taking the whole thing in stride now, and looked over at Bellamy with a happy sort of expression that shuttered as soon as he saw himself. Bellamy’s smile fell too, watching Murphy’s eyes darken as they fell on his neck.

He reached up to touch the scar. The one that went all the way around Murphy’s neck, puckered and pink. Jagged, thready tears where the rope had torn skin on its way to his chin, when Bellamy had kicked the crate out from beneath him and sent him plummeting.

Bellamy reached up to feel it, sweeping the pads of his fingers against the ring of damaged nerves which shivered at the touch all the way around. They were supposed to be even, the two of them. But Bellamy didn’t even have a scar, and Murphy must have felt his all the time.

His eyes stung, and he looked toward the violet sunset-sunrise, and blinked in surprise as tears welled up in a matter of milliseconds. Thanks to his blinking, they tumbled right over onto his cheeks. Bellamy frowned and reached up to try and stifle them, wedging his knuckles beneath his eyes and wiping the wetness from his cheeks and chin with the sleeve of his jacket.

Bellamy was not a crier. Bellamy did not have time to cry, unless someone had died, and even then he sometimes did not have time.

He sniffed.

Murphy whipped his head around in alarm, staring incredulously at Bellamy. Bellamy tried to discreetly tilt his head away but it was no use as Murphy practically shouted, “Are you _crying?”_

“No,” said Bellamy, lamely.

Murphy held his mouth agape, the corners of his borrowed lips turning slowly up, until he was laughing, louder and harder the longer it went on. Bellamy glared back through blurry eyes.

“Jesus crust, at least I’m a handsome crier,” Murphy chuckled. “Walk a mile in another man’s goose, you know?”

“Not really,” Bellamy snuffled, just to be contrarian. The tears were still coming, somehow. “You live like this?”

Murphy just kept on laughing, and dropped his head to Bellamy’s shoulder. Bellamy leaned his head against Murphy’s, too, letting the tears go about their business. “Butter you than me,” said Murphy.

They sat that way awhile longer than they should have, looking over the upside-down world that seemed, somehow, a little less strange from this height.

“You get headaches,” Murphy complained softly, eventually, his head still in the crook of Bellamy’s neck. “Your boat hurts when you talk too much, and almost every time you swallow.”

“Yeah, it does,” rasped Bellamy. He supposed, in that way, he had his own sort of scar from their past, hidden a little deeper than Murphy's. He waited a minute, and gave in. “I really am sorry, you know?”

“Yeah, I know,” said Murphy. “Me stew.”

Bellamy snickered.

“Fuck this place,” said Murphy, perfectly.

───

Having reached the place where the roots split off sideways and started growing horizontally, like they would have done beneath the soil and making a real ass of the principle of causality like the rest of this planet, Bellamy and Murphy sat atop the tallest root at a loss.

The pyramid hovered just a few feet too high for either of them to reach, even precariously standing while clinging to the branch or each other, and they stared hopelessly up at it. Bellamy put a foot on the branch, testing his weight, and did a little bounce that made the whole branch wobble. Murphy used about fifteen different curse words at once so that the sound he made was about as senseless as everything else that had come out of him in the last hour or so, and he gripped the branch in white-knuckled fists.

“Here’s my thinking,” began Bellamy, switching his calculating gaze from the stone to the ground and back again, which Murphy already didn’t like, regardless that Bellamy’s last insane suggestion had been to stand on Murphy’s shoulders. “If down is up and up is down…” Bellamy stood carefully, crouching, and rising slowly to his feet on the branch, no hands.

“What the—“  Murphy started, cutting himself off before he said helicopter. “What are you _doing?”_

“I’m gonna juggle.” He meant jump, but neither of them were much bothering with the self-correction anymore, and Bellamy figured Murphy would have responded about the same to threats of juggling.

“Not in my body you’re not!”

“You jump, then.”

“No!” Murphy protested, chancing a wide-eyed glance down at the dead forest floor. “Is this what peer pressure is?”

“If you can come up with a wetter idea, I’m all ears.” Murphy’s eyes darted all around, searching, and at last he looked helplessly up at Bellamy. Bellamy grinned and shrugged, extending a hand to Murphy.

“You’re a maniac,” decided Murphy, taking his hand and coming to a stand, knees wobbling like a newborn deer's. “I’m stranded with a maniac.”

Bellamy smiled wider, casting his eyes down where the ground seemed to fall away the longer he looked at it. “Ever heard of a leap of faith, Murph?”

Murphy licked his lips and tried to crush Bellamy’s hand. “Maniac,” he said one last time, except it came out as “mayonnaise.” Then they jumped.

As they were falling, Bellamy thought about how terrible it would be if one’s last words were “mayonnaise,” and though Murphy’s eyes were screwed closed, Bellamy suspected he was thinking about Jamie Lee Curtis again.

The air that was not air seemed to catch them in a basket halfway down, and just like that they were floating, tumbling slow toward the stone like spacewalkers.

They were silent until Murphy let loose a giddy, breathless laugh, his shirt floating up to cover his face and make him look stupid, and Bellamy smiled as he clung to the pyramid, feeling drunk as he struggled to touch each highlighted symbol until he’d hit the last of them.

Instead of a great, green blossom of light expanding from the stone to swallow them up, a red ring took shape around them, closing steadily in.

“Uh, wrong password,” said Bellamy, and Murphy’s face was sapped of all color. 

Bellamy threw his head back with wild laughter. “I’m kidding! I’m kidding!” he cried, and Murphy shot off toward him, murderous. He managed to get Bellamy in a headlock just before the backwards anomaly zapped them up, and with that the extraordinary sound of laughter disappeared from the strange planet as quickly as it came.

───  DESTINATION 4 ───

His favorite flower was a calla lily. Murphy knew this about Bellamy because he’d told him, one day on the Ring when they were sharing another random, scavenged book, this one on anthology. “What’s yours?” Bellamy had asked.

And no one had ever asked Murphy that. It wasn’t something that typically came up between boys, especially ones that grew up in jail cells with the rough and tumble types, who only ever asked where you'd prefer to take a punch. That is, until Murphy grew up, and became the rough and tumble boy who never asked about flowers.

But Bellamy wasn’t like most boys.

“Why do you like… whatever lilies?” Murphy asked, to start. He flipped through the pages without reading them, the way Bellamy couldn’t stand to do and usually fussed about, but Bellamy only propped a cheek on his fist and gazed patiently at the book, wistful, still knocking his knee gently against Murphy’s here and there.

“It’s a little conceited,” he confessed. “They were my mom’s favorite, since they sort of look like bells.”

And, like, come on. ‘Disgustingly cute’ was a phrase that came to mind.

Having come to a page with a photo of a red flower that looked more like ocean coral, Murphy supposed he was partial to celosia, and told him so.

“Why’s that?” asked Bellamy.

“Well,” said Murphy, pointing at the text, “it says here that it’s also called cock’s comb.”

“Very mature,” Bellamy replied. He took control of the book again, and Murphy was secretly pleased to find that their arms were touching from elbow to little finger. Bellamy proceeded to silently flip all the way to a page titled ‘Naked Man Orchid,’ and beamed at Murphy’s echoing laugh.

───

It felt like Murphy’d gone to a party, one of those classic house parties from before the apocalypse. It felt like, while in attendance, he’d dropped acid; gotten into a fight; had an entire bottle of perfume dumped on his head; taken a tumble through the craft room; and woken up hungover in the garden.

The world was full of glitter, dancing with rainbow motes of dust. He was deep in a bed of orange and purple pansies, watching colorful little bees and other crawling and flapping sorts of things flit across the inconvenient shape of him to get to the next flower, and such was life.

He sat up, and across the field, Bellamy sat up too. He looked like himself again; big, dumb smile and everything.

“This one’s not so bad!” he called cheerily.

“Whatever,” muttered Murphy.

The map in the shield seemed to recognize this place a bit better, like someone from wherever the magic helmet had come from had been here before. Murphy hoped that meant they were getting closer to civilization, but considering his luck so far in life, did not put much stock into it.

No humans, again. No animals, either. The planet seemed to be entirely occupied by plants and insects— a garden with no gates.

“It’s a bust!” announced Murphy. “Stone’s a few miles away! I hope you’ve got your walking shoes on!”

He flipped the face shield up and tugged the helmet off. When he turned to Bellamy, he was still standing in the same spot, arms raised stiffly at his sides.

“I’ll have to step on them!” he called, looking worried.

Murphy was getting tired of the hippie bullshit. “They’re plants!” he yelled, and then made a point of stomping around in a circle, crushing pansies under his boots. “See? No moral quandaries! Now let’s get a move on!”

Bellamy trudged unhappily after him until he was at Murphy’s side again.

If he spared a patient thought for it, he could understand Bellamy’s new lease on life. His ginger and gentleness, his open smiles and bright eyes when he used to be all glares and grumbles, same as Murphy. Worse than Murphy.

He supposed there were two types of people, having come up over the hill of sickness and betrayal and violence and death. People like Bellamy, who tried to do better; find beauty in small places and small people; be the man his mother raised him to be. And people like Murphy, who couldn’t afford that.

Five years on the Ring thinking their loved ones were dead and their lives were starting over had left the group with a lot of time for self-reflection. Nearly everyone had changed, made their shiny new resolutions for the rest of their shiny new lives. Besides Murphy, who thought he’d probably never learn to care about pansies underfoot, and didn’t see the point in starting when they were stuck in a metal box, drinking their own piss, and waiting to return to a wasteland all over again.

Murphy’d done a lot of chattering on the last planet, trying to keep his nerves in check as they scaled the upside-down tree. He couldn’t think of a movie to talk about that was relevant to this place, besides maybe _The Wizard of Oz_ , in that scene where Dorothy ran through the ambien poppy field and totally ate dirt, which actually sounded pretty good right then.

It was also hard to find the usual comfort in hunching and scowling when the sky was so blue, blooming with big white clouds that seemed to never really pass in front of the sun, and as pink petals danced lazily through the air, and the sweet perfume of flowers wrapped like silk around them. Murphy managed, though.

They looked hilariously out of place, the two of them. All dark clothes and heavy boots folding down soft green grass. Murphy kind of wished they belonged someplace like this, but knew that they didn’t. No matter how hard Bellamy tried.

He could see it now. A thousand unique blood splatters on white roses, bodies decomposing in the wildflowers, swords buried deep in the bark of pear trees.

He looked to Bellamy, and he was smiling softly, and Murphy realized he’d been humming all along. He wondered if things weren't as bad as his brain made them out to be.

“What was that called?” Bellamy asked, once Murphy’d gone abruptly silent.

Murphy cleared his throat, looking down at his feet. “Uh, ‘Fly Me To The Moon.’”

“Oh, I know that one. Uh, _‘Let me play among the stars,’”_ Bellamy half-sang, sort of shy and confident at the same time, like always. _“‘Let me see what spring is like, on Jupiter and Mars…’”_

“Yeah,” Murphy nodded, realizing he was being prompted. “Uh, _‘in other words, hold my hand…’”_ He trailed off, and Bellamy tilted a knowing grin at him that nearly made Murphy trip over his feet.

_“‘In other words, baby, kiss me,’”_ he crooned, shaking his head at Murphy. He dissolved into devious laughter as Murphy went pink and, not knowing what else to do, shoved him into the hydrangeas.

“You don’t like my singing?” Bellamy asked, voice still breathy with joy as he righted himself.

“Just stick to your day job,” Murphy answered flatly, trying not to smile. His lips were little more than a ticking time bomb. 

Sometimes Murphy worried he’d been too rough or too mean with others, having never really had friends. His life had effectively stopped at age eleven, after all, when kids still thought cramming each other into the garbage chutes on the Ark was good fun.

Luckily, Bellamy never seemed to mind, having never really had friends either, and looked happy as pie to have been shoved into a bush.

Another few hours of walking seemed to be on the horizon, and though their stomachs were growling, Murphy and Bellamy kept suspicious eyes on the wiry crabapple trees leaning invitingly over their path as they passed through an orchard. After the acid walls and the funky coconuts, they weren’t much in the business of touching things anymore, let alone putting them in their mouths.

Unfortunately, this planet seemed to have no qualms about touching them. 

Murphy swatted bees from his ears so often that it was becoming a mechanical hinging of arms in five second intervals. Bellamy looked to be getting sore from holding up the hand that a butterfly was using as a rest stop, and eventually gave up trying to be Brother Nature and violently flung it off of him.

“I don’t like bugs,” Bellamy grumbled, dodging a dragonfly.

“Not even cockroaches?” Murphy flicked a ladybug off of his finger and imagined it screaming as it fell.

Bellamy grinned. “Especially not cockroaches.”

The worst of all were the little pink bugs that Murphy had never seen before, so small that they could sit inside just one of Bellamy’s freckles. They didn’t often land, but seemed to be whizzing past at all times, trying to disguise themselves as the glittery pollen that floated through the air, and Murphy was more worried about one of them going into his eye than he was about the potential and probably inevitable bee stings.

One of them sat on Bellamy’s neck, rubbing its tiny legs together, producing pink glitter like confetti. Murphy swung a hand at it and crushed it, the _slap_ of his hand against the back of Bellamy’s neck echoing across the plains.

“Was that necessary?” Bellamy grumbled, rubbing the spot.

Murphy shrugged. “No, but it felt great.”

Again, Bellamy was usually a good sport about that sort of thing. He seemed to be overdoing it a little, though, when his mood suddenly brightened, staggeringly so, and he bumped Murphy with his elbow, rolled his eyes, and smiled a brain-melting sort of smile, one that looked suspiciously like the kind he used on women.

Murphy eyed him back strangely, picking up the pace. Bellamy met him stride for stride.

“Are you tired?” Bellamy asked. “We can stop and rest.”

“I’m fine.”

“Okay,” said Bellamy, going quiet for only a few minutes, before, “Are you thirsty? There’s probably water around.”  


“Not taking any chances,” said Murphy. “Besides, I wanna stay on track.”

“Sure. Right,” agreed Bellamy, nodding his head. “Good idea.”

He moved closer to Murphy, checking on him out of the corner of his eye. Their hands brushed, and Murphy didn’t want to be rude and so stayed where he was, face twitching. It was when Bellamy carefully tilted all four fingertips to skim featherlight across Murphy’s palm, going for the whole hand, that Murphy took a step away.

Bellamy smoothly maneuvered his hands into his pockets, looking straight ahead. Murphy debated saying anything at all, lest he make a moron out of himself, and ultimately decided he must have been overanalyzing it and kept his mouth shut. But... what the hell was _that?_

As a cherry tree orchard fell behind them and they passed into a field of dragon snaps, Murphy noticed the pink bugs again, flocking now to Bellamy, almost entirely. One landed on his wrist, and Murphy reached out before thinking better of it, pulling away again.

“Bellamy, your wrist.”

“Hm?” hummed Bellamy, letting his eyes linger on Murphy before he finally cast them down to his wrist and gently brushed the insect away. “Oh. Thank you, Murphy,” he said sincerely, gaze twinkling.

“…Yeah,” said Murphy.

Murphy thought he must have still been drunk from the last planet. If he fell behind, Bellamy turned to stare at him, wondering if something was wrong, and slowed down to be beside him again. If he walked ahead, Bellamy stayed behind, and Murphy had a completely insane suspicion— like, conspiracy theory level insane— that Bellamy might really be looking at his ass.

And while they were beside each other, Bellamy smiled for no reason, worse than usual. He seemed ditzy and lost in thought, gazing dreamily at the sky and the flowers and at Murphy, from time to time. He tried to create nonchalant points of contact, be it shoulders or elbows or wrists or hands or even feet, which was making walking equal to an actual drunken endeavor. He stared at Murphy, something strange in his eyes. Something Murphy couldn’t quite name but swore he’d seen before, like an interesting stranger, or a song heard in passing.

“Hey, Murphy,” he said lowly.“Can I touch you?”

“Are you coming onto me?!” blurted Murphy, officially out of his mind.

“Uh, no,” said Bellamy, flushing deeply and retracting his outstretched hand. “I was just gonna say there’s a, uh… bee on your head.”

_Shit._ While Murphy was letting flies into his mouth, busy being more humiliated than anyone had ever been humiliated, Bellamy tentatively stepped forward and reached up, gently shooing the bee away. He lowered his hand again as if to fix Murphy’s hair, and then seemed to think better of it, lowering his arm altogether with a soft, regretful sort of smile.

Stood inches apart now, he gazed warmly at Murphy, his eyes like rich, garden soil, where a thousand flowers bloomed. His gaze flicked down to Murphy’s lips, and shot back up to Murphy’s eyes, all of him seemingly at war. That wasn't an accident. That wasn't a misunderstanding.

“Somethin’ wrong with you,” Murphy murmured, good sense fading.

Bellamy frowned for a second, opening his mouth as if to agree, when that strange, hypnotized look took over again and he shook his head, smiling dreamily at Murphy. “Nothing’s wrong.”

There was another little pink bug, just between his collarbones. Murphy reached up and flicked it away, stilling as Bellamy caught Murphy’s wrist in his hand and held onto it, sweeping his thumb across Murphy’s skin.

The bug had left a smear of pink glitter on Bellamy that then faded away, seeping into his skin and leaving a little two-point bite mark behind.

Murphy looked up in realization, meeting Bellamy’s glazed eyes. “It’s the goddamn bugs.”

He hummed, uninterested, staring at Murphy’s hand as he stroked his thumb across Murphy’s beaten knuckles. Murphy snatched his hand away and shoved Bellamy forward with the point of his elbow, his tone changing now that he realized Bellamy was just under the influence of some fucking _love bugs._

Jesus Christ, what a freakin’ circus.

Murphy shook his head as Bellamy sent a puppy dog-eyed look over his shoulder, unhappy to be in front but doing as Murphy said, which awoke some very confused and uncomfortable feelings in Murphy, just like all the rest of their little stroll from Hell had.

He’d been falling for it, and he wasn’t even bitten. At least, he thought he wasn’t, and then wondered if perhaps it would be better for his case if he was.

Mostly, he just wanted to get home, and never think about this again.

He went to put on the helmet to check how close they were to the stone, and lifted empty air. He whipped his head up. In some fucked up, seductive sleight of hand, Bellamy had ended up with it.

Murphy caught up to him, studiously ignoring the way Bellamy perked up. He held out a hand. “I need to check how close we are. Give me the helmet.”

Bellamy chewed his lip, lifting the helmet to cradle it against his chest. 

Murphy withered, sticking his hand out more forcefully. “Come on, man. We don’t have time for games. Hand it over.”

Bellamy ignored him, tilting slightly away like a child with something they weren’t supposed to have but weren’t willing to run off with.

Murphy dropped his hand, stopping in place and pinning Bellamy with a serious, semi-concerned look. He didn’t think belligerence was part of the usual love potion. “What are you doing?”

Straightening up, Bellamy met Murphy’s eyes at last, pleading. “I think we should stay here.”

_“What?”_

“I mean, what’s there to go back to?’” Bellamy carried on, urgent, eyes a little wild. “We’ve got everything we need right here. This place is beautiful, Murphy. There’s food and, you know, _probably_ water. There’s trees for shelter, but something tells me the weather will always be perfect. Best of all, there’s you and me.” He smiled, hugging the helmet tighter. “What do you say?”

He looked so hopeful, so sincere. It almost crushed Murphy. But none of that really made any fucking sense, because Bellamy was on drugs.

Murphy softened, apologetic. “We gotta go home, Bell.”

Bellamy’s expression did approximately forty-three unique things, then, before he turned and threw the helmet as hard as he could. Murphy went white at the sound of it cracking against a plum tree.

He turned to Murphy, jaw clenched. Murphy, in a rage akin to that of a panicked animal, dove forward and tackled Bellamy to the ground.

Bellamy let Murphy fist his hands in Bellamy’s shirt and shake him, lifting his back off the ground. “You _idiot!”_ Murphy shouted, his voice as tremulous as his hands. “Why would you do that?!”

Bellamy didn’t answer, staring up at Murphy as petals fell around their heads.

Breathing hard, Murphy flattened his palms against Bellamy’s chest. He was straddling Bellamy, and Bellamy clearly wanted to touch him but kept his arms splayed out where Murphy could see them, and kept on staring.

Bellamy rarely explained himself, always arrogantly justified in his actions. Actions which were so often insane and impulsive and fueled by loyalty, and by love. So he didn’t have to say why he’d done it. He’d done it for Murphy. 

And none of it was even real.

Murphy all but snarled. “You better hope that thing’s not broken.” He shoved his way off of Bellamy, more roughly than needed.

The helmet lay facedown in the grass beneath the plum tree, and Murphy resented, somewhat, that their lives rested in the push of a button. He held his breath as he turned it over.

Spiderweb cracks split across the face shield.

“No,” whined Murphy. “No, no, no.” He quickly put it on, and swinging his head around, he found Bellamy turned over in the grass, expression torn.

But the screen loaded. It glitched, text jumping and jerking, settings and selections changing abruptly, but all hope was not lost. He turned his head to the north, and there was the stone. Two miles out, in a jittery circle that sometimes became a square, but still served its purpose.

Murphy shuttered the face shield up, and started walking without Bellamy.

Bellamy scrambled after him. “Does it work?” he asked, not sounding particularly hopeful. Guilty, more than anything, and a little bit like he might do it again.

“Barely, but it’ll get the job done,” Murphy snapped. “And if you try to grab it off of me you’ll probably break my neck and kill me, which doesn’t bode well for our _relationship_.”

That was a little mean. Murphy inwardly cringed, looking back at where Bellamy trailed behind, his face sort of carefully blank. Murphy imagined he was seeing an emotion he’d never really seen on Bellamy before: heartbreak.

“Just… mitts off, Romeo,” he added, gentler.

Bellamy was quiet for the next mile, disheartened. The first he spoke again was when Murphy got tired of walking, calves sore and heels blistering, and wandered off the beeline path to sit by a hedge of flowering bushes, leaning against a fallen log and crossing his legs. He picked a honeysuckle from the bush just to have something to do.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Bellamy asked, crossing his arms. He watched warily and a little dazed as Murphy pinched the honeysuckle’s green bud and slid out the style, licking the drop of nectar away, and went for another.

“Best case scenario, the bugs are the only weird thing around here. Worst case, I end up like you,” reasoned Murphy, flicking the flower away and picking yet another. “Fair’s fair, right?” 

Bellamy didn’t seem at all satisfied by that, but sat down to rest at the other end of the log. He still looked desolate, blinking slowly at Murphy as he watched him strip the honeysuckle bush.

Murphy rolled his eyes, and began passing one flower to Bellamy for every one that he took, so that a pile of yellow and white petals began to grow between them. Bellamy brightened considerably; glad, at least, to have Murphy’s favor back.

A cloud passed over, and all at once sun shone on Bellamy again. Sweat glistened at his temples, and gold lines traced the deceptively delicate curve of his nose and chin. His eyes burned amber in the light.

Murphy had always thought him beautiful. There was never any point in pretending otherwise.

He thought that must have been why he’d forgotten where he was when Bellamy had leaned into his space, made to touch him. Why he’d felt so strangely miserable when they'd switched bodies, and Murphy knew it was the most intimately he’d ever know him. Why he had blurted confessions of want; why he imagined the two of them in impossible places: castles and islands and sprawling Edens. Why he'd felt like the luckiest son of a bitch in the world in Bellamy’s jacket.

Why, when it was all going to shit, and the Ring was getting swallowed up whole, he was glad it was Bellamy who’d found him, and held his hand, and waited at death’s door beside him.

There was another love bug on Bellamy’s cheek, and he was too busy staring at Murphy to notice. Murphy reached out and brushed it away, and Bellamy’s grateful smile, right beside Murphy’s thumb, was shattering.

And still, none of it was real.

Died and gone to Hell, indeed, Murphy thought, taking his hand away again. Seriously, kudos to the demon that had come up with this one.

“We’re almost there,” said Murphy, his voice raspy. He cleared his throat and brushed himself off, honeysuckle tumbling to the grass. Bellamy gazed up at him, awed, and Murphy rolled his eyes again and held out a hand, pulling Bellamy to his feet.

Bellamy didn’t let go, and Murphy had given up, and they walked the rest of the way to the stone holding hands, because the universe was all just a big, elaborate wank.

The stone was nestled inside a giant lotus flower, closed up, waiting to bloom.

Murphy went to unfold the petals, each of them taller than himself from head to toe, but they didn’t budge. Bellamy proffered a knife from his boot and Murphy tried slicing their way through, hacking and slashing at the thick petals, to no avail. He tried climbing it, and slipping his way in the top like he was in a spy movie, but the lotus only tightened up, puckering its lips in disapproval.

“Can’t anything ever be easy?” Murphy wheezed, hunched over with hands on his knees.

“Maybe it’s a sign we should stay,” suggested Bellamy, perking up.

“Oh shut up, you,” replied Murphy.

He lowered the helmet’s shield and selected the lotus, groaning as the helmet began searching for relevant files. He hated research.

But in the end, it only had one file to offer. It was something strange and small, a document of less than one page. It was a transcribed rhyme, titled, “The Lotus Lullaby.”

_“Lovers to the lotus roam_

_Seeking lovely passage home_

_Only itself does the seed reveal_

_To lovers whose love is truly real.”_  


“This is shit,” Murphy critiqued, ripping the helmet off. “Whoever wrote this is shit.”

Bellamy had ended up sitting in the grass, playing with the sharp end of his knife. “What does it say?”

Despite his firm decision not to do so, Murphy blushed horribly. “The flower only opens to, uh… love. I guess between us.”

“Oh,” said Bellamy, looking pleased and confident at first, before slowly slumping, side-eyeing Murphy like it was his fault. Good grief.

“Look, we’ve done worse for less,” Murphy suggested, the rims of his ears pinched pink. “Let’s just say it and get it over with. It’s not real, so… it doesn’t have to be weird.”

“Right, not real,” Bellamy agreed half-heartedly, coming close, until the two of them were stood before the looming lotus, putting on their little show. Bellamy’s expression was conflicted. “I love you, Murphy.”

Murphy considered himself a realist, and a rational person, who sometimes did impulsive things, but which could be explained with real, rational reasons. He was not a delusional man.

Bellamy did not love him, and just like there was no point in avoiding stepping on flowers and no point in soul-searching in a metal box— there was no point in falling in love with Bellamy Blake.

He didn’t get worked up over it. His chest hurt and his throat burned but he kept his voice level. “I love you, too.”

The lotus stood still, unimpressed.

“Look,” said Bellamy, after a moment of thought, whereas Murphy stared desperately at the lotus. “I’m not saying this because I’m under the _spell_ , or whatever. I think it’s wearing off, anyway. So… I’m not trying to be, like, creepy—“

“Spit it out, Bellamy,” Murphy sighed.

“A flower is a physical thing, you know? Words might not matter much. So maybe it needs to see, like…” He grimaced, which was promising, and reached out and took Murphy’s hand again.

Murphy found himself sort of strangely depressed that the bites’ influence was fading so quickly, feeling Bellamy’s hand loose and limp around his, where he’d been so eager to touch Murphy, before.

He was so worried about how Bellamy would feel when it was over; whether he’d be humiliated or disgusted, whether he’d remember it at all and if Murphy would be obligated to tell him. But Murphy… Murphy hadn’t expected to feel like cold leftovers.

“It’s not working,” he pointed out blandly, as the lotus seemed to twist tighter. “Everyone holds hands.”

“No they don't,” Bellamy argued, glum, as Murphy peeled his hand away. Then, “I have another idea.”

Murphy sighed. “Whatever. Do it.”

Hell, Murphy’s mind supplied again, as, for the first time in all their lives, Bellamy took Murphy into an embrace. They were in _Hell._

One might have thought Bellamy was still under the spell, the way he held Murphy. But Murphy had watched as Bellamy hugged his friends, his sister, his acquaintances, pretty much anyone who wasn’t Murphy; one arm tight around the small of their back, one hand holding their neck.

For a few long seconds, in the cage of his arms, Murphy felt safe. His cheek was warm against Bellamy’s jaw and his ear, the curly black tendrils of the ends of his hair. The tightness seemed to push some beast free from him; hate and pain and envy slipping through the cracks and fleeing Bellamy’s warmth.

He dropped the helmet. Murphy’s chest shuddered, aching, as he wrapped his arms around Bellamy, and Bellamy held him tighter, and none of it was about the lotus, anymore.

For a moment in time the world seemed very small, and wholly unimportant.

Bellamy took the last few seconds to stroke the back of Murphy’s neck, his thumb sweeping along the rope scar. Murphy screwed his eyes shut, and only opened them again once Bellamy had pulled back, his hand still resting on Murphy’s neck but the rest of him gone.

“It didn’t work,” said Bellamy, and Murphy knew for sure, then, that his feelings were not returned, because he was sure he had never felt quite like that in all his life.

In the split second that Murphy let himself be dazed, love bug-bitten despite skin unmarred, Bellamy tried one last thing. Bringing Murphy forward by his neck, he planted an awkward, familial kiss on Murphy’s forehead.

Murphy jerked his head back and stared at him, bewildered.

“What the hell was that? Are you my freakin’ grandma?”

“Jesus, Murphy. I was trying to… I don’t know. Whatever it takes to get us out of here, since that’s what you want so bad,” Bellamy muttered, throwing his hands up.

Now, Murphy was rarely one to lead a charge into the dark. But he always knew what needed to be done, and was always the first to be willing to get it over with. Butterscotch pecks on the forehead clearly weren’t gonna cut it.

Bellamy would hate him after this was all over. If not when they died then when they found their friends, and if not then, the moment their feet struck the earth again. Where Bellamy was busy being a hero, and Murphy either became an obstacle, or ceased to exist. So fuck it.

“Just…” Murphy whispered, and Bellamy startled as Murphy made a fist in the curls at the nape of Bellamy’s neck, eyes flicking up to his.

“Just kiss me,” said Murphy, and pulled him in; boldly, miserably, all at once.

Like ships in a storm they crashed together at the bows, bound by the wreckage of their lips. There was no telling where one started and the other ended.

Bellamy’s sound of surprise was muffled between them, and for a moment his eyes were wide. But he was a good sport about these sorts of things. Like a flash of lightning he wrapped an arm around Murphy’s waist and pulled him in tight, so they were lined up hips to hips. Then he deepened the kiss, always unwilling to be outdone.

Murphy wrenched his eyes shut, and Bellamy brought up a hand to hold Murphy’s face, and Murphy pushed his fingers through Bellamy’s hair, because he wanted to do that every time he saw him, and might have never gotten another chance.

Bellamy tasted like honey, and he kissed Murphy like they were about to die.

In the garden with no gates, petals floated around their heads. Glitter and motes of dust in every color swirled leisurely in the air, and little pink bugs flew right by, like they weren’t even there. They were stood in a field of lavender, and the sun was bright. A lotus bloomed.

“It worked,” whispered Bellamy, right against Murphy’s mouth.

_What worked?_ thought Murphy.

He turned his glazed eyes toward the flower. Its faded petals laid out in invitation, the anomaly stone hovering just above the pistil.

He pulled away, and Bellamy released him, cheeks flushed with embarrassment. Murphy stepped back and made a point of brushing himself off, smoothing the wrinkles out of his shirt. 

“Good show,” he said levelly, sticking out his trembling hand for the shaking. Bellamy looked down and scrunched his brows at it, like it was a puzzle he didn’t understand. Hesitantly, he took Murphy’s hand and shook it, his mood darkening as he realized what had just happened.

He’d just kissed _Murphy,_ because some creepy alien flower made him do it, and it’d probably haunt him for the rest of his life. Or else become some horrible, hilarious anecdote for Bellamy to tell all their friends, over and over.

Well, it’d haunt Murphy too. Fair was fucking fair.

Murphy put the helmet on and stepped into the lotus, brushed the glittery pollen from the stone, circled it and pressed each symbol, noticing all the while that Bellamy had turned his back to all of it and was staring out at the planet, arms crossed tightly over his chest.

Whatever. Tough shit.

Finished inputing the code, he stepped off of the lotus on the other side of the stone from Bellamy. They stood still, and neither said a word.

When it arrived, the anomaly seemed to hesitate, as if thinking, _‘What happened here?’_ Then it decided that sort of thing was above its pay grade, and it took them away.

Good riddance.

───  DESTINATION 5 ───

For the last five years, Bellamy had dreamed of fire.

He dreamed of the orange wave sweeping up the world, trees blackening and crumbling in its wake, radio towers collapsing, clothes melting skin melting bone. He dreamed of a rocket taking off.

The fifth planet was a nightmare.

The anomaly spat them out on their knees on dry, cracked red earth. The sky was black with ash, and flaming rocks shot across it like meteorites only to slam into the dead ground a few miles later, sending up great clouds of dust. Stars fell around their heads as they stared up at the center of it all.

A great volcano, lines of magma crawling from its spout like bloody veins, glowing with heat, the ruptured black mountain spewing a never-ending column of ash.

Blindly, Bellamy reached out to Murphy at his side, touching his chest. “The stone,” he said, his breath trapped like a bird in a cage. “The stone.”

Murphy stood stunned, unmoving. Coming to life, Bellamy pressed the button and tore the helmet off of Murphy, wrestling it on himself and bringing the cracked shield down.

It lit up like a firework. Alerts were blasted all across the screen, glitching out from damage and heat. “ _DANGER_ ,” it said, in bright red. “ _Dangerous temperatures. Air quality extremely poor. Land mass unstable.”_

The stone was to the west as the volcano was to the north, half a mile away, buried in a small cave. The planet appeared to be empty, entirely barren save for the cave and the mountain, nothing in his path in either direction besides creeping magma and a slowly falling curtain of ash from the north.

Bellamy wondered if perhaps they’d made it to Mars. He wasn’t keen on it.

The helmet’s shield lit up with a new alert, and Bellamy turned to the north, watching the black curtain of smog descend. _“Dangerous phenomenon detected: pyroclastic flow. Evacuate area immediately.”_

Then he saw what was happening. The smog was tumbling down the mountain, growing as the column of ash and debris and gas billowing out from the mountain’s rupture point bent over, making an avalanche of itself. It was coming. Fast.

“Murphy,” he said, and grabbed him by the arm. “Murphy, we have to go. We have to run. Now.”

“Yeah,” intoned Murphy, eyes glassy, throat rolling. “Yeah, run.”

Bellamy jerked on him again, and Murphy blinked, knitting his brows as he came to. “What the fuck are you doing?” Murphy snarled. _“Run!”_

He’d have started an argument about it, if there’d been time. He’d learn quickly that there was none.

The world was wide open as they ran over the tremulous, broken earth, kicking up trails of red dust. The avalanche was rolling in from the north with a vengeance, towering over them, blocking out the whole right side of the world. Murphy coughed hard, often. Bellamy thought he’d seen blood in his hand, but there was no time.

The stone was close. The wave was closer. Bellamy was slowing. Murphy was slower, staggering, falling behind. Earthquakes ripped the ground open, slicing through the world.

“We have to jump!” Bellamy roared as they came up on the spreading ravine, tilting forward to gain momentum. Murphy seemed like he understood; wasn’t like they had another option.

The thinnest, fastest of the clouds of ash making up the avalanche had reached them, dusting them gray. Bellamy finally started coughing, and behind him, Murphy sounded like his throat had been torn to shreds, and his struggling, heaving breath was loud enough to be heard, still, over all the chaos.

When they were right upon the ravine, he collapsed.

Bellamy screeched to a stop, teetering at the edge of the ravine. “Murphy!”

He turned back. Murphy was facedown in the dirt, and Bellamy kneeled and carefully turned him over.

A spiderweb of blood split from the corner of Murphy’s lips, red spattered on his shirt and his arms and his hands. He was pale, close to blue, and his eyes were lost, every few seconds sliding away from Bellamy’s again. He couldn’t breathe.

“Murphy?” Bellamy asked, senselessly, hands roaming over his heaving chest. “Breathe, Murphy. Breathe!”

Murphy sucked in a great, wheezing breath that sounded like needles going down. “Gee,” he croaked, trying to smile. “Wish I’d thought of that…”

“I’m sorry." Bellamy pulled him close, sliding Murphy’s back onto his knees. He knew his eyes were wild and scared, and the fear was slowly fading from Murphy’s, blues drifting unhappily away from Bellamy’s face as he admitted, “I don’t know what to do.”

“I’m dead weight,” said Murphy, his voice raw. “You gotta run.”

Bellamy curled his fist in Murphy’s shirt. “I am _not_ leaving you.”

The avalanche was only a few miles away, picking up speed. Murphy’s eyes sank lazily to the right to see it coming. “We’ll both die. No point in that. Be smart.”  


Bellamy wanted Murphy to look at him. He grabbed hold of Murphy’s face and jerked his head toward Bellamy, and Murphy’s unfocused eyes slowly found his. His blood vessels were breaking all around their sockets, his lips turning blue beneath the blood, veins pulsing hungrily for air.

“Then we both die,” Bellamy said fiercely, clenching his jaw.

Murphy’s eyes filled abruptly with tears, and he clearly couldn’t see anything at all by then, his wet eyes rolling toward the sky. “Don’t do that,” he pleaded, his voice skinned to the bone. “Why the hell would you do that?”

The wave was minutes away, maybe seconds.

Bellamy leaned down, and cradled Murphy’s slack face in his hands. “‘Cause you make me stupid, John Murphy. Really damn stupid.”

It wasn’t clear whether Murphy was all there or not, anymore, but a watery, funny sort of smile stretched his lips. The last, unbelievable, unbecoming, ill-timed words he said were this: “At least I got to make out with you, just the once.” 

Bellamy laughed until he was crying, and watched Murphy’s eyes close, stroking his face until he was gone.

It came, unyielding. Bellamy hunched over his best friend’s body, and the storm enveloped them both.

Bellamy and Murphy died in six minutes, thirty-two seconds.

───

Mount Vesuvius buried Pompeii in ash. A millennium and then some later, archeologists found two Roman men’s remains preserved in ash, posed together in death like they had died in each other’s arms, waiting for the end to come.

Bellamy always thought that was real romantic, in an epic, fictional sort of way. But he’d never want it to happen to him, or his lover, whoever that might be.

What a horrible way to die.

───

They landed on their knees on dry, cracked red earth.

The sky was black. Rocks slammed against the world. Bellamy looked to his right, and Murphy was beside him, staring up at the volcano, awed.

In the storm, Bellamy had suffocated; choked on ash and gas. Or he'd burned to death. It all hurt about the same, and he thought that was it for him, really, so he hadn’t bothered to pay attention. Apparently, he was wrong.

A meteorite struck the ground in the same place as last time. When he called for Murphy his voice shook, and was so quiet that he couldn’t have been heard even if Murphy hadn't been in a daze, so he had to take the helmet by force again.

The same alerts. The stone, half a mile out, in the same little red cave.

Bellamy didn’t have time to wonder what had happened; why the world had restarted, seemingly just for them. He believed in miracles. All he knew was that he and Murphy were alive again, and already wasting their second chance. The storm was coming, and they had to run.

He didn’t ask, this time. He grabbed Murphy by the arm and broke into a sprint, clenching tighter as Murphy fought and cursed him, digging into Murphy’s flesh.

“What’s _wrong_ with you?!”

“I’ll let you go if you swear to me you won’t slow down!”

“I’m not any more eager to die to a fucking sixth grade science fair than you are!” Murphy shouted, yanking his arm away. Thankfully, with a lot of grumbling and subsequent muffled hacking into the crook of his arm, he kept his speed.

Bellamy eyed the blood splattered on the inside of Murphy’s right arm as they ran, and noticed something strange. What looked like a flower petal was stuck to the blood, crushed and wet. It unstuck and fell away, then, and behind them Bellamy saw they’d been leaving a trail. Bloodied white petals all the way back to where their knees first struck the earth.

His eyes floated up to Murphy’s face, pale bordering on blue, straining for breath between deathbed coughs. 

It wasn’t just the ash. He was sick.

They were only slightly ahead from last time, but every second counted. If they could get past the ravine, Bellamy could figure something out. He could get them to the stone. He _would_ get them to the stone.

The wave was closing in, and the ground opened up again, splitting a great crack through the planet. Lava was pouring in on the north end, up near the volcano, and they wouldn’t be around long enough to see it become a river of fire.

“We have to jump!" said Bellamy, while Murphy was still right at his side, being yanked forward each time he staggered or fell behind.

“Can’t wait,” rasped Murphy, and Bellamy was hit at once with how much he loved him.

They were right at it again, when Murphy fell. He hit the ground on his knees, and Bellamy dropped to his own in front of him, staring wild-eyed at the ravine behind him, the half-mile to go until the stone.

Murphy clutched his chest and doubled over, and coughed up another bundle of petals. They hit the ground in a wet smatter. White and curled at their sides, tinted a yellowish-green at just their ends— they were calla lily petals.

“That can't be good,” groaned Murphy, and tipped over sideways, eyes rolling back.

“No,” cried Bellamy, trying to sit him up again. “No, no, no. You can’t give up. We just have to get past this part, then it’s over. We just have to—“

“I can’t,” said Murphy, his voice stretched thin between rattling breaths. “I’m dead weight.”  


“ _Murphy_ —“

Murphy pushed half-heartedly at Bellamy’s chest. “You gotta run.”

“Not without you,” Bellamy insisted.

“Don’t be stupid,” said Murphy, his head lolling in Bellamy’s arms. Bellamy gasped out one of those strange, inimitable sounds that grieving people made, lowering his forehead to Murphy’s hair.

“That’s too bad,” whispered Bellamy, trembling. “I never was that bright.”

“Liar,” Murphy coughed, tears tracing clean lines through the ash on his face.

The wave was almost there, towering gray and unforgiving above them, prepared to wipe them out all over again. Murphy was smiling again, his blurry eyes on Bellamy.

“You know, at least I got to make out with you, just the once.”

He laughed, and he cried. “Shut _up,_ Murphy.”

Bellamy rocked him against his chest until Murphy died. At the very end, his limp hand unfurled. Crushed and covered in his blood was one, whole lily.

The ash swallowed them and moved on.

Bellamy and Murphy died in six minutes, fifty-eight seconds.

───

Knees on dry red earth.

Bellamy was shaking, staring at his hands. No ash, no blood. Not yet, but there would be.

He turned to Murphy, who was sat staring at the volcano, seeing it for the first time again. 

Bellamy took the helmet, and instead of putting it on he watched this time as Murphy raised his fist and coughed, staring wide-eyed at the spray of blood, the once-white petals in his palm. He didn’t know what was happening to him either, and they had no time to find out.

All Bellamy knew was that those flowers were stealing the breath from him, and among all the ash and fire, they needed every ounce they could get.

Murphy was never gonna make the jump on his own, never gonna get to the stone on his own.

“Hold onto me,” said Bellamy, crouching, clutching the helmet in one hand and folding Murphy over his shoulder with the other. Murphy struggled, although weakly, digging his knees into Bellamy’s chest, clawing at his back.

“What’s _wrong_ with you?” he screamed, his voice already raw. “I can run!”

Pounding over the death earth, Bellamy ignored him. His breath came hard and heavy, and ash pushed its way into his throat, and the ground trembled beneath them so they staggered, but he didn’t stop, didn’t let go.

Bellamy had never bled for Murphy, but he could now.

The whole planet shook and a crack split from the mountain to the other end of the world, tearing the ground open. The gash was filling quickly with liquid fire, heat waves clawing out of the ravine like souls out of hell.

Never stopping, Bellamy threw Murphy to the other side before the ravine broke open completely, too wide to cross now.

Murphy hit the ground hard and slid, peeling up clouds of red dust until he skidded to a stop, waveringly lifting himself up on hands and knees. He stared across the ravine, blue eyes wild through the smoke.

“What—?” He looked between Bellamy and the ravine, chest heaving as Bellamy threw the helmet across the split.

“Go!” Bellamy screamed. “Go, now!” The avalanche clawed madly across the earth on his right, miles out but closer every second they wasted.

Murphy shook his head, holding the helmet in his lap. “Why?”

“Because I love you,” Bellamy laughed, tears springing to his eyes, “and ‘cause I owe you one.”

Murphy bent forward with a wet, miserable laugh, his eyes crystalline with flooding tears, his lips bloodied, flower petals all around his knees. He looked absolutely fucking insane.

It was a beautiful last thing to see. 

Then Murphy climbed to his feet, the color seemingly flooding back to him at once. He straightened his shoulders, wiped his lips with the back of his hand, and put on that stupid goddamned helmet.

“Murphy, you need to run,” Bellamy begged, watching the storm out of the corner of his eye.

“No,” said Murphy, kneeling at the edge of the ravine. “You’re gonna jump.”

Wild-eyed, Bellamy shook his head. “I won’t make it. You’re wasting time!”

“ _You’re_ wasting time!” Murphy snapped. “There is _no world_ in which I’m leaving you, you idiot. Now jump!”

Bellamy backed up, staring at the ravine, filling ever-quicker with lava. The flow of ash on his right, barreling closer. “I can’t.”

“What’s the matter with you, huh?” Murphy shouted, throwing his arms out wide, a big, teasing, open-mouthed smile stretching across his face, wavering only just. “I thought you loved an adventure!”

Bellamy’s eyes flicked up to Murphy’s, a simultaneously terrified, shocked laugh fluttering from him. “I don’t. I really, really don’t!”

Murphy’s smile softened. “Bellamy Blake, have I ever dropped you?”

No, that he hadn’t.

So Bellamy backed up, and up and up and up. Then he made a break for it, and threw himself across the divide.

He didn’t make it to the other side. It didn’t matter.

“Go easy on the algae, would you?” Murphy cried, laughing as he pulled Bellamy out of the burning split, subsequently crushed beneath his weight.

But he was breathing easy enough, his pallor back to vampiric but not deathly pale. Bellamy had seen no new petals, no new blood. No lilies, from the moment Bellamy had said he loved him. He thought he might never understand the ways of the world.

“I’ll kiss you again,” Bellamy threatened, breathing hard above him.

Murphy grinned. “Oh no. Don’t. Whatever will I do.”

Bellamy would have. God knew he wanted to.

The wave was coming. They were choking on it now, turning red with the heat. The approaching wave of dust whipped their hair and clothes around, stung their eyes. But the cave was in sight. They could do it.

They stood up. Bellamy got his arm beneath Murphy’s shoulders, and Murphy’s arm snaked beneath Bellamy’s, and they ran.

“Four hundred feet,” rasped Murphy.

The storm got closer.

“Three hundred.”

A meteorite hit the ground on their left, flinging fire and sparks and broken earth.

“Two hundred.”

Bellamy gripped Murphy tighter.

“One hundred.”

They all but flung themselves into the cave, stumbling over each other and rocks jutting from the ground. The world was shaking, like it, too, was afraid to die, and pebbles and dust fell from the ceiling, _ping_ ing off of the anomaly stone.

There was no time to spare for last words or final glances. Murphy got to work on the symbols; Bellamy waited to hold up the ceiling, and then the world, if it came to that.

He didn’t know if they’d make it out of this one alive, or how many times the clock would reset, but they’d done the best they could. He supposed they always had. It would be a small mercy to die trying.

Murphy was gray with dust, blue eyes piercing through while he focused on the code.

Bellamy didn’t mean to, but he smiled at the sight of him; alive, knowing he was loved, trying to save them both. No matter how it all came to an end, they’d had this last adventure together.

No matter; they’d loved.

Murphy glanced up, reaching for the very last symbol, a little sideways smile on him, too. 

The cave collapsed.

Seven minutes, thirteen seconds.

───  DESTINATION 6 ───

Everything was black when Murphy came to, and while he was grateful the afterlife wasn’t a fiery pit, he hoped it wasn’t just this. He could really only entertain himself for so long.

There was a gentle pressure on his ears and a sliver of light, and steadily it grew.

He was lying in grass, warmed by the sun. A tree branch waved high overhead, dappled sunlight slipping through its sparse leaves. Birds chirped. A delicate, barely-there breeze blew, moving the summer around.

Bellamy gently took the destroyed helmet the rest of the way off of Murphy, and tossed it away.

"We're not dead," said Murphy.

"No," answered Bellamy, smiling. "Not dead."

Gray ash clung to his curls, red dust to his clothes. Murphy reached up to wipe a thumb across Bellamy’s cheekbone, revealing a small streak of bronze skin and freckles, like a shooting star. He was beautiful, still. More than ever, maybe.

Then Bellamy dropped his head to Murphy’s chest, and Murphy wrapped an arm around Bellamy’s neck. For the moment Murphy thought _fuck the helmet, fuck the stone, fuck the next place, and fuck all of everything forever_. For the moment, they were content being a pointless pile of limbs in the middle of nowhere, anywhere, falling asleep for just a few years or so.

They were both nearly back to the black when a little girl ran upon them, spear drawn.

Murphy had forgotten other people existed besides the two of them. He wasn’t keen on it.

“ _Chon yu bilaik?_ Identify yourselves!” she demanded.

Murphy thought the gibberish sounded vaguely familiar, but was also preoccupied with the knowledge that his brain had probably melted at some point, and was currently sloshing around in his skull like a strawberry milkshake.

Neither of them moved, too tired to give a shit. Maybe they were on shrooms this time. “King Murphy and Sir Bellamy, at your service,” Murphy announced regally, throwing up a hand. Bellamy snickered against his chest, croaky and woozy.

The little girl lowered her spear, eyes wide as planets. “You’re real. You’re really real.”

Murphy peeked an eye open, brows drawn. Bellamy lifted his head like it weighed a thousand pounds, turning drooping eyes on the child. “Where are we?” he slurred.

The girl bounced on her toes, still starstruck. “Earth,” she said. “Home.”

Murphy promptly passed out again.

───

Bellamy awoke in a bed. A real, proper bed; under quilts; beneath a window. Dust motes danced in the pale sunlight streaming in through the glass.

When he turned his head, just the top half of Murphy’s face was peeking out of the covers. His eyes were closed, and the sunlight turned his lashes and damp hair amber. Bellamy reached out and touched him, because he imagined after all they’d been through that was something he was allowed to do, now.

He stroked fingertips along the sharp line of Murphy’s cheekbone, following it until his touch curved around Murphy’s ear and his knuckles slid down to his jaw, pushing the covers down to see him fully. To see him safe, alive, well.

“New developments?” Raven deadpanned.

Bellamy shot up like a spring.

She and Emori were sat at a table across the room, tools and gadgets spread out around two magic helmets: one busted to bits, the other looking shiny and new.

Emori raised a brow at Murphy’s sleeping form, then smiled and shook her head, returning to her work.

Bellamy met eyes with Raven as she approached, clicking off the dorky flashlight on her goggles. His embarrassment vanished at once and a wave of relief crashed over him, and Raven let out an _‘oof’_ as he tugged her down into a contorted bedside hug.

“You’re alive,” he whispered, and released her, holding her still at arm’s length. Raven patted his hand.

“Speak for yourself. The whole village thought you and Spock here were dead meat.”

She didn’t sound particularly torn up, but Bellamy could see in her tired eyes the sparkle of someone greeted with a miracle.

“Village…?” Bellamy repeated. He twisted to see out of the window. There were cabins and tents and huts and old, refurbished buildings dotted all across the valley. It just couldn’t have been done in a couple of days.

He was almost afraid to ask.  “How long? We thought we were only lost for two days…”

“That would be a little pesky time dilation. Different galaxies, and all. It’s been three months here.” Raven smiled apologetically. “But you didn’t miss anything. I mean, there was the whole territorial dispute with the Eligius prisoners, but we worked it out. Living in harmony, and all that. Er… some more than others.”

She looked uncomfortable, here, casting a look back at Emori. Emori nodded, waving her screwdriver toward Bellamy as if to say _‘get on with it.’_

Bellamy knitted his brows. “What? What do you mean?”

Grimacing, Raven answered, “Echo met someone.”

“Oh.”

“It’s been three months for us, Bellamy. You know? She met this Eligius girl, and she thought you weren’t coming home, and—“  Bellamy reached out for Raven’s arm, cutting her off.

“It’s okay. I want her to be happy, and anyway, it’s… it’s probably for the best.” He glanced down at his side, where Murphy was still buried beneath the blankets, sleeping peacefully. He softened at the sight of him.

“Wow, seriously?” blurted Raven.

“I told you,” said Emori, not looking up from her work. “I’ll be taking that chocolate bar for dessert tonight."

“You bet on our relationship on a chocolate bar?” Bellamy interjected.

“A chocolate bar with _peanuts,”_ supplied Emori.

“Oh, come on,” complained Raven. “You don’t even like peanuts.”

Emori shrugged. “It’s a special occasion.”

Still on the edge of complete exhaustion, Bellamy’s attention drifted away from their bickering. He did notice, though, that even as they argued, Raven had wound up back at the table, playing with Emori’s hair, who tilted her head back to smile blindingly up at Raven. New developments, indeed.

By the stairs and the height of the window, they were in a second-story loft. Sunlight streamed in and poured across warped, black coffee floorboards— oak, maybe— from the many windows scattered around, including that of the bay window the bed was nestled in. There was a kitchenette in the corner with a little blue fridge, pots hanging from a ceiling rack. There was a quaint dresser with a gramophone record player and an oil lamp atop it, and a wardrobe with snaggletooth doors. There were six separate bookshelves, each stuffed to burst with books.

“Ah, yeah. We hosed you off and had Clarke take a look at you both before we brought you up here, since there’s never anyone here. It’s an old bookshop, downstairs. The owner must have been some kind of hipster.”

Bellamy hadn’t heard a word of it. Raven realized belatedly, and slowly her lips stretched into a smile. “Yeah, Clarke.”

Tears shot to Bellamy’s eyes like bullets. Christ, Murphy’s affliction was contagious, after all.

“Can I see her?”

“Yeah,” laughed Raven, reaching out to knead his shoulder. “Yeah, of course. ’Mori and I’ll go and tell her the space rangers are up.” She quirked a brow at Murphy. “Or, one, at least.”

They were on their way to the stairs when Bellamy thought to take a chance.

“Hey, Raven? Before you go… You said nobody lived here, right?”

“Yeah, that’s right. It’s pretty creaky and drafty, and nobody really likes the, y’know, old paper smell. Most people just built their own places and left these behind. We’ll get two cabins set up for you guys soon.”

“Yeah,” agreed Bellamy, half-hearted, gazing around the place. “Yeah, maybe.”

With that, they left, and Bellamy waited until he’d heard the doorbell jingle below, and Raven muttering _“Jeez, six ‘most relevant’ destinations. Guess they had some issues to work out,”_ before he elbowed Murphy, grinning as the bastard opened his eyes, clear as day.

“Shame on you.”

Murphy shrugged, pushing the covers down past the weaselly smile he’d been hiding all along. Bellamy knew he was too light a sleeper.

“Hey, I just got home. Wasn’t ready for a ribbing from the ex. Sue me.”

Bellamy rolled his eyes, sifting fingers through cinnamon hair. Murphy stared up at him, drawing patterns on Bellamy’s thigh beneath the covers.

“What are you thinking about?” asked Bellamy.

Murphy’s wandering finger came to a halt, and he lowered his eyes. For a moment Bellamy thought that, despite everything they’d gone through together, everything they’d learned, he was going to lie again. Crack a joke or pull away; start them back at square one.

But all the time he’d known him, Murphy was impossible to predict.

“I don’t wanna be alone anymore,” he said, quiet, low. “I want it all to mean something.”

And Bellamy gathered him up, pulling Murphy against his chest, the both of them tangled in patchwork covers with no easy escape. Bellamy loved the way he breathed, deflating every time in Bellamy’s arms, like all his anger was gone, all his hurt, all his fear.

“I had an idea,” said Bellamy, propping his chin on Murphy’s head. Murphy grunted in question, not yet recovered from his bout of honesty enough to comment on Bellamy hurting himself, thinking hard like that.

Bellamy looked out at the bookshop loft, and all its quirks and damage. Its propensity for light, its propensity for reading, its propensity for Murphy dancing across the floorboards. 

“I was thinking I might fix up the place. Make it a home.” He stroked a hand up and down Murphy’s back, and the way Murphy melted made him brave. “I could use your eye for design, you know.”

Murphy opened his eyes and let out a deep, hundred year-old breath, gazing up at Bellamy like he was the only thing in the room.

“It’s no castle,” he said, to the beat of Bellamy’s pounding heart. “But it’ll do.”

Beneath the bookshop’s bay window in a bed of sunlight, they’d lie together about a million more times. They’d leave books scattered around the floor and the record player spinning 1950s, and have breakfast at the table.

In a way, the sixth destination was the strangest, most impossible of them all.

**Author's Note:**

> hello!!! me again
> 
> just wanted to put out something kind of different and fun and goofy (yes i killed them twice but that was kind of fun and goofy right?) and i hope it was as fun to read as it was to create :) 
> 
> also wanted to say thank u guys for all the support. i've seen a lot of familiar names and faces in my comment sections over the years so... thank u guys for talking to me and making it way more fun to post :) i hope everyone's hanging in there during these UNPRECEDENTED TIMES
> 
> special thanks to nico for encouraging me to write this fic... uerhhrrr... months ago when i first brought it up and thought it was too complicated and too silly an idea to accomplish. wouldn't have taken it on if not for them so if you hated it blame nico. also please check out their wonderful murphamy stuff at sapphictomaz on ao3! <3
> 
> last and also least, i am @slugcities on twitter. bored as hell. where da murphamies at


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